Quick viewing(Text Mode)

Stigmata and Physiological and Other Phenomena Of

Stigmata and Physiological and Other Phenomena Of

AND PHYSIOLOGICAL AND OTHER

PHENOMENA OF MYSTICISM.

In honour of Father Herbert H. Thurston, S

A New Horizons Review.

Copyrightt New Horizons Research Foundation March 1987. INTRODUCTION

Stigmata are "wounds", marks or points of bleeding which simulate the injuries of Christ. Stigmatics (i.e. recipients of sitgmata) can develop marks corresponding to any or all of the piercing of hands and feet, the "ferita" or lance-wound in the side, the bruise on the shoulder from the weight of the cross, chafing of wrists or ankles, weals of scourging and a coronet on the brow (crown of thorns). Allied to the stigmata is the "token of espousal" or mystic ring, a modification of the skin or flesh of the ring-finger of the right hand (appropriate to a nun's "betrothal", and if healing are omitted, the curious phenomena reported variously of some mystics may be listed as follows.

Physiologically expressed phenomena include stigmatisation, incendium amoria ("flames of love"), incombustibility, fragrance, bodily elongation, (ability to survive without food). Physiological peculiarities alleged of the mystic's mortal remains comrpise the ability to bleed, incorruptibility and absence of rigor mortis.

Levitation, irradiance, telekinesis and "miracles of abundance" are classified as physical phenomena, but for convenience are also discussed, though briefly. Except incidentally, we shall not discuss phenomena which appear to be mental occurrences akin to , , , or "" as encountered in secular .

The status of the evidence.

It is difficult to reject all the alleged physiological and physical phenomena as frauds or fictious. Admittedly we can have little confidence in many of the reports, particularly concerning the elder where hagiographers have been over- zealous. Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419) was canonized on the basis of 873 miracles, surpassing Moses, Elijah, and combined. Of this saint it is said that preaching one day in the open he stopped a passing funeral procession and temporarily revived the corpse to bear witness as to the truth of what he was sayingl (Some ecclesiastical wags said that an even greater was his persuading the women of Liguria to abandon their especially ornate head-dresses). The position has improved of late as a result of modern critical hagiography and the principles established by Pope Benedict XIV (1675-1758), who stressed that nothing should be ascribed to the if a natural explanation is possible. Extraordinary phenomena (other than posthumous miracles of healing) are not nowadays required in proof of holiness of life, which diminishes the motive for ascribing wonders to the virtuous departed. The tests of evidence in this field are the same as those in psychical research or in historical studies. As with George Washington's cherry tree, eye witness depositions are preferred to hearsay evidence, and should be recorded soon after the event, with circumstantial detail. The value of depositions made at processes for beatification or canonization is sometimes but not usually reduced by the lapse of time between the death of the candidate and the enquiry. Many of the hearings of the Congregation of Rites concerning the beatification or canonization of holy persons are extremely detailed and include affidavits made by very responsible people and have to be treated with considerable respect. The title Venerable can be conferred^in recognition of the cult of a departed person which has grown up in his diocese. The title Beatus or Beata ("The Blessed"), if approved, will be binding on the whole church, but is only bestowed by the Pope himself after extensive hearings by the Congregation of Rites. Canonization is the award of the title Sanctus or Sancta ("Holy"), bestowed similarly. In modern times this is only done after another longish interval subsequent to the beatification of the deceased. Typical intervals after death are thirty years for beatification and at least fifty for canonization, though there are exceptions, such as the early canonization of the "little Theresa", Saint Theresa of Lisieux whose book, published posthumously, gained early and widespread popularity, so that the supporters of her'cause'had both popular support and a good supply of funds (mecessary for the work of investogation, finding witnesses, and sending them to Rome).

Interpretation and Categorization.

There is however one difficulty in the way of reliable interpretation, in contradistinction as to determination of authenticity. This is the shortage of data of a comparative type from other religions, although it is known that there are groups with mystical traditions within Islam, in India, and possibly in the Orthodox Christian churches. Unfortunately little is known of their phenomena. Few data exist in the Protestant world, because Protestants, it seems, are less given to mysticism. Almost all the available material worthy of study occurs in the Roman Catholic sphere. Non-Catholic students (including the present writers) have to overcome a lofty barrier of initial sceptism? partly scientific doubt, and partly a legacy of the Lutheran reaction against the contemplative life and the cult of saints. But it is wrong to suppose that intelligent Catholics (to whom we are indebted for searching factual and critical studies) have all been gullible. Even in the thirteenth century, many ecclesiastical authorities would bear heavily on mystics suspected of fraud or love of notoriety. (Generally speaking it is easier for Roman Catholic mystics to have their honesty accepted after death than while they are living. Similarly the Vatican, although for some centuries disapproving of political democracy, has in the matter of sanctity a tendency to accept the maxim Vox populi, vox dei, and to recognise the holiness of those deceased religious for whom the masses "vote with their feet", as evidenced by the numbers of pilgrims to the in question. Thus it must be admitted that possibly all hearings before the Congregation of Rites are not of equal rigor. None-the-less we feel that the majority of these'processes' have to be taken seriously in regard to the truthfulness and objectivity of the witnesses).

Returning to the problem of interpretation we should say that we, the authors^operate ourselves within the system of categorization of strange occurrences sketched in our companion paper (Miracles and Healing Miracles). We characterize a phenomenon as "probably normal" if on balance, after considering the evidence and comparing it with parallel phenomena in other fields of enquiry, it seems that there is a reasonable prima facie case for regarding that type of phenomenon as generated by normal causes even if these and their modus operandi are not as yet fully known or understood. We use the term to refer to phenomena which, if they did not occur, in a religious context would be immediately classified as "parapsychological" or as falling within the sphere of " research". Such happenings are type events such as befell Forgione in his early years and the Cure' of Ars during most of his life, also the "reading of hearts", i.e. knowledge of people's thoughts and feelings as exhibited by both the priests we have mentioned, and which in a secular sphere we would call telepathy or "psychic sensitivity", "in the present essay we do not in fact have reason to assign phenomena to other presumptive categories such as the "supernatural". Of course we do not claim any finality of judgement. Unlike many groups extant today we do not claim our verdicts to be other than provisional, temporary, and unendowed with unfa nihility. (En passant it is worth saying that it is not only the Papacy that claims infallibility but certain self-called "humanist" groups, such as PSICOP that are not only more dogmatic than the Vatican but are more far-reaching in their claims).

We should also say that interpretations of religious phenomena do not cast aspersions on the sincerity or genuine religious dedication of the persons concerned. To all of them we could say, like Kipling, that, in certain respects at least, "You're a better man than I am".

Mystical prayer.

Many of the problems connected with an intellectual acceptance of the objective reality of the phenomena of mysticism may be alleviated by the recognition that mysticism involves psychological and behavioural tendencies which are far removed from the world of everyday life in which most of us "live and move and have our being".

In the present context "mysticism" means "mystical prayer" ("contemplation"). It is not given to most people to graduate from ordinary prayer to any or all of the three stages of mystical prayer. At the first level the mystic concentrates his mind (by conscious effort) on divine themes. If the state of "full union" supervenes, the mystic enjoys a sense of divine presence, but is still capable of voluntary withdrawal, unless the state of "rapture" or "ecstasy" has been attained. Ecstasy iis, broadly speaking, a kind of trance in which the mind is cut off from the environment unless aroused by some dramatic intervention such as a blow, or an imperative command. Sometimes when overtaken by ecstasy the mystic continues in automatic fashion with his present occupation, which may be preaching or saying Massl .

The ecstatic has visions of divine persons, or instead, may merely experience a sense of bliss and unity with the Divine. Attempts have been made to equate ecstasy with other forms of trance; hysterical catalepsy, somnambulism, hypnotism, the meduimistic trance, or drug-induced states; but it is unsafe to suppose that these conditions are identical to one another or to ecstasy. However, as pointed out by St. Theresa of Avila (1515-82) who attempted to distinguish between "natural" and mystic ecstasies, a hysterical trance can be confused with ecstasy. Religious mystics normally interpret ecstasy in terms of real contact with God. This is debatable in those very numerous cases when they receive demonstrably false concerning matters of fact. But in other cases the belief cannot be contradicted, though equally it cannot be logically proved true. Judgement has therefore to be suspended in the face of an important empirical fact; the majority of the alleged physical phenomena occur in persons who engage in mystic prayer and experience ecstasies. This goes some way to explain why, if the phenomena are not fraudulent or illusory, they belong only to religions where mystical prayer is practised. The link between ectasies and phenomena does not, of course, prejudge the issue as to whether the latter are supernatural or due to obscure natural causes. St.

Few stigmatizations, if any, can be dated prior to 1224 when, it is said, St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) received wounds in hands and feet subsequent to a of a received during ecstasy. His stigmata were described as fleshy excrescences resembling the curved-over point of a nail on the palm and a nail-head on the back of the hand. But examination of portraits of the Saint and evidence from modern cases suggest that the excrescences were merely raised scar tissue, so that the problem reduces to the origin of the wounds. As many as 300 subsequent instances of stigmatization have been alleged but only a few provide data of value.

Bleeding through the skin.

Elena Ajello (born in 1901 in Monalto Uffugo, , ) was especially devoted to St. Rita of Cascia (1386-1457), who was said to have had an evil-smelling stigmatic wound which remained unhealed in her forehead. In 1923 Elena experienced a vision in which Christ injured her brow with His own crown of thorns. Some hours later a physician was called to her (still in an ecstatic state) because blood was flowing copiously from her forehead. Dr. Turano wiped away the blood and found that at intervals she would contract her brow in a painful spasm and blood would then excede from the pores. Similarly with the famous stigmatic Louise Lateau (I85O-I883) of Bois D'Haine, Belgium, when Dr. Gerald Molloy wiped the blood from the backs and palms of her hands he found oval marks of a bright red hue about one inch long by half an inch wide. The blood forced its way through unbroken skin in sufficient quantity for visiting pilgrims to soak it up in their handker• chiefs several times in an hour. Dr. Warioment of the Belgian Medical Academy enclosed Louise's arm in a special glass apparatus and showed the bleeding was spontaneous and not due to prior irritation of the skin by Louise. The Venerable (1774-1824) of Coesfeld, Rhineland, besides other stigmata had the ferita on her right side, and a Y-shaped cross on her chest, both merely areas from which the blood exuded at certain times.

The variability of stigmata.

Bleeding through the skin is indeed an exceptional occurrence, but would seem to lie within the limits of what is naturally possible. Various facts weaken the case for supernatural causation. On the supernatural hypothesis it is odd that twelve centuries elapsed without stigmatics. This is so whether or not the "thorn in the flesh" of which St. wrote referred to him being stigmatised as some scholars have speculated. Gases of stigmatisation also fail to satisfy a principle that the present writers like to call the "Septuagint test". According to the popular legend King Ptolemy II of Egypt commissioned seventy-two rabbis to translate the Torah (i.e. the Pentatuch or Five Books of Moses) into Greek for the benefit of the Jewish community in Alexandria, who had lost their knowledge of Hebrew. They were kept vigorously segregrated from each other. Consequently, when their seventy-two versions were discovered to be word for word identical, it was hailed as a miracle and proof of divine inspiration and the literal truth of the Biblical narrative. Unfortunately there is no unanimity in the evidence yielded by stigmata as to the facts of the crucifixion. The study of stigmatisations is inadequate in helping us to determine the historical features of that event.

Did Jesus carry the cross on his right or left shoulder? Was Jesus pierced in the left side (Louise Lateau) or the right (Catherine Emmerich)? The shape of the stigmata vary between stigmatics and from time to time in the same person; the marks in the hands of Theresa Neumann (I898-I962) of Konnerareuth, Bavaria, were sometimes square and sometimes round. Elena Ajello was devoted to St. Rita. Catherine Emmerich's Y-shaped cross was unique to her, but resembled the unusual Y-shaped cross in the church of St. Lambert at Coesfeld where Catherine had spent long hours in prayer. These oddities are suggestive of the influence not of the supernatural but of ideas that have become lodged in the mind of the sitgmatic. This seems definitely to have been the opinion of one of the finest scholars ever to consider phenomena — Father Herbert H.C. Thurston (1856-1939). an English Jesuit and prolific writer on paranormal and the allegedly supernatural. A member of the Society for Psychical Research, he published the article "The Phenomena of Stigmatization" in the Proceedings, (Vol. 32. Part 83, 1922), and the important book The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism (Burns, Oates, London, 1951) • He was consulted on various occasions by the Catholic ecclesiastical authorities in cases of stigmatisation. In one of these the woman made a happy marriage, and the stigmata ceased forthwith. Father Thurston made an interesting general observation to the effect that in respect of the ferita, i.e. the lance wound, its location tends to reflect that of the particular painting or sculpture which the stigmatist uses as chief object of devotion. The wound tends to be on the opposite side in the body to that in the representation of the crucified Jesus. I.e. it is mirror-imaged, occurring in the side nearest to the position of the wound in the representation. Another correlation with Christian art which also suggests psychological rather than supernatural influences at work is the invariable occurrence of nail-wounds or scars in the palms of the hands. This cannot be realistic because the weight of the victim would inevitably tear the hands, if nails were used and not ropes, which were in any case much cheaper. However almost all depictions of the crucifixion show the nails through the palms and not the wrists, where they would need to be if used. Perhaps we could leave the last word on this to the stigmatist Theresa Neumann mentioned above "These marks have only a mystical meaning. Jesus must have been fixed more firmly on the cross". (The itself is not decisive. The word cheir means hand or wrist).

The relation between pictures of the crucifixion and stigmatisations offers an explanation for the strange absence of the latter until 122k. It is a remarkable fact that there were for all practical purposes no representations of the crucifixion until the Middle Ages, except in a few very obscure places, such as some Syrian Gospels of the sixth century. (See Andre Grabar, Christian Iconography). This was because of certain dogmatic principles as to what were fitting subjects for religious art which sought to avoid idolatry.

In recent years the Shroud of Turin (whose known history commences in 1357),one of few surviving candidates for being Jesus' winding sheet,that survives out of k2 rivals extant in the fourteenth century, has become very fashionable as an object of speculation and as an appropriate point d'appui for practice of the profession of which Saint Francis de Sales is the patron saint, i.e. journalism. Whether its testimony as to the facts of the Crucifixion ever comes to be the final arbiter of these matters as yet we cannot say. However we may note in passing that the Shroud does little to resolve the discordant testimonies of the stigmatists. The famous "negative image" discovered in 1898 shows patches which are interpreted as the marks of the scourgings, also wounds in the wrists, not the palms, and the use of a single spike through the two feet. The spear thrust is deduced to having been on Jesus' right side. Some "sindologists" (i.e. students of the Shroud) claim that the Crown of Thorns is absent and argue that it was actually a suitably ornamented cap on the Victim's head. Others deduce the wound in the forehead from blood flows registered on the Shroud. Other patches or flows are interpreted as indicating that Jesus bore the Cross lashed high on his back. As he walked or staggered along,stoo ping under its unsymmetrically distributed weight, both shoulder-blade areas were bruised but the right one more than the left.

Visionary experiences and stigmata.

Before leaving the question of the variability of the stigmata we might compare the testimony of the wounds with that of the visionary experiences of the Crucifixion which numerous religious mystics have had. These visionaries comprise both stigmatists (Catherine Emmerich, Theresa Neumann) and those without the stigmata such as Saint Bridget (1302-1372), the patron saint of Sweden, or Saint (1522-1590). The latter, interestingly enough, had some characteristics in common with stigmatists; she fell into a long ecstasy each week in which she relived Christ's passion. However there have been.many religious visionaries unrestricted as to time and subject of their imagery. Among visions of the Passion and death of Jesus, there is no agreement; in fact the visionaries disagree not only with each other, but with scripture. In her raptures Catherine Emmerich saw three nails used in the Crucifixion, but St. Bridget saw four. Theresa Neumann saw the Passion and death of Jesus re-enacted every Thursday and Friday, but in saying that the Apostles did not fall asleep at Gethsemane she contradicted Matthew, Mark and Luke. Catherine Emmerich was rather critical of the Blessed Maria of Agreda who wrote a Life of the Virgin, and believed Maria to have taken literally many visions which she should have understood allegorically. It is possible that Catherine, herself the author of The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary composed on the basis of her visions (still a popular book, Tan Books, P.O. Box kZk, Rockford, Illinois), was correct in placing the death of the Virgin at 13 years after the Crucifixion, but Saint Elizabeth of Schonau in the twelfth century gave 18 months for this interval, Saint Bridget 15 years and Maria of Agreda 21 years 4 months and 19 days.' However if Catherine Emmerich was correct in seeing St. James the Great present at the Virgin's death, then the chronology of the Acts of the Apostles is in error. As for Saint Catherine of Ricci, we might note in passing that some embarrassment was felt at her beatification process because in her visions Savonarola, who was executed as a heretic at Florence in 1^98, appeared in the role of saint and martyr. However, Pope Benedict XIII cut the Gordian knot by decreeing that the Saint's virtues had to be considered separately from her visions, thus sett ing a precedent of almost indispensable utility. Benedict, who denounced luxurious living on the part of the higher clergy, may have been swayed by antipathy for the memory of Savonaralo's relentless opponent Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia.

Psychological factors in stigmatisation.

Because the forms and locations of stigmata appear to be subject in some degree to suggestion, the phenomena of stigmatisation cannot be regarded as entirely due to a purely organic cause in the same way as haemophiliac bleeding is. Similarly it is not the same at all as haemathidrosis, i.e. red perspiration due to the presence of the bacterium micrococcus prodigiosus. At this distance in time we cannot be sure that the "sweat of Gethsemane" of Saint Veronica Guiliani (16?6-1727) was not haemathidrosis but in view of modem observations of bleeding through the skin it seems eminently likely that this saint's skin exuded actual blood. As we have seen, the variability of the stigmata and their apparent dependence to some extent on suggestion militates also against a supernatural origin. This encourages the search for a wholly naturalistic explanation of stigmatic phenomena. This cannot be done at the present time because we know too little about vascular physiology to be able to give an effective theory for the mechanics of the process. None-the-less further evidence can be marshalled in strong support of the hypothesis that an important factor in stigmatisation is auto-suggestion on the part of the stigmatics, who perhaps without exception have been given to intense brooding on the suffering of Jesus. This theory is well supported by the fact that many, though not all, stigmatics show undoubted signs of having suffered from hysteria at some time in their lives. "Hysteria" is employed in the technical sense as an illness that can take a bewildering variety of forms* temporary blindness, deafness, paralysis, losses of sensibility in the skin or excessive sensibility; comas, fainting fits, spasms; miscellaneous aches and pains, etc. Some stigmatics like Elena Ajello are described as manifesting hysterical symptoms. Others like Theresa Neumann and Berthe Mrazek (a friend of Nurse Edith Cavell, who was shot by the Germans in 1915), suffer from mysterious paralyses of sudden onset, relieved by equally mysterious cures, which infallibly may be ascribed to hysteria.

A hysterical illness has no organic cause, and is psychological in origin. But the patient is not shamming; he is really ill, and is the victim of a complex and mainly unconscious process of auto-suggestion. When hysteria is found in a stigmatic it is a good indication of a high degree of auto-suggestibility. The naturalistic theory of stigmatisation ascribes it to auto-suggestion affecting blood flow and tissues in persons endowed with unusual suggestibility and an obsession with the sufferings of Jesus. This is not quite the same as ascribing stigmatisation directly to hysteria, which would go beyond the facts, as there are stigmatics who cannot be classified as hysterical. The link between hysteria and stigmatisation is merely that each is a possible result, in appropriate conditions, of a temperament potentially auto- suggestible in certain ways. Failure to realise that the connection between hysteria and stigmata is a subtle and indirect one has, of course, occasioned much polemic even within the ranks of the faithful, as well as between the latter and infidels.

Advocates of the supernatural origin of stigmata have stressed the rather minor character of the effects such as blisters, rashes, eczemas, produced on the skin by suggestion under hypnotism. But this does not do full justice to Dr. Adolph Lechler's results with "Elizabeth" an.' Austrian peasant girl who was both very devout and under treatment for hysteria. On Good Friday 1932 she was deeply affected by seeing a film of the Passion and death of Christ, and (significantly) complained of pain in feet and hands. That evening Dr. Lechler gave her the hypnotic suggestion that wounds would develop at the site of the pains. Moist wounds appeared during the night. Further suggestion deepened them, and resulted also in tears of blood, the crown of thorns, and inflammation and sagging of the shoulder. Dr. Lechler substantiated his claim with photographs taken prior to restoring normality by counter-suggestion.

The work of Dr. R. Schindler also appears to be quite relevant to the hypothesis of auto-suggestion being an important factor in the aetiology of stigmatisation. (Wervensystem und spontane Blutengen. Karger, Berlin, 1927). In his monograph on spontaneous bleeding, Dr. Schindler described in detail three cases of spontaneous skin haemorrhages of unknown origin in which he succeeded in demonstrating a psychological basis. In all these cases the most thorough medical investigations failed to reveal any abnormalities of the blood or the vascular system. Schindler found that in each case he could, by means of hypnotic suggestion, produce bleeding at chosen times and at designated spots on the body. To prevent cheating,the designated areas were covered with plaster casts during the time lapse between applying the suggestion and observing the bleeding at the assigned time. All three of the patients had been referred to Dr. Schindler on account of their spontaneous bleeding, which was a severe handicap and source of misery to them. One woman had been bedridden for nearly five years because of this ailment. A severe fever always accompanied the occurrence of the bleeding, but both disturbances subsided simultaneously as a result of psychological treatment. The other two cases were also cured by the psychological approach.

In the light of Lechler's achievements, as well as Schindler's, it would be daring to assert that stigmata are supernatural, and in modern canonization processes such as that of St. (I878-I903) of Lucca, the Church abstains from so doing. Contrariwise we cannot assert that stigmata have yet been proved entirely natural. Difficulty may rationally be felt concerning a naturalistic interpretation of St. Gemma's stigmata. A beautiful Italian girl with a disposition of great sweetness, Gemma often had ecstasies on Thursday evening (a common pattern to which many stigmatics conform), when red marks showed on the backs and palms of the hands. A rent in the flesh opened by degrees, sometimes becoming very deep, the openings on each side almost reaching each other as far as could be ascertained without painful probing. The cavities were full of blood. On the Friday the flow would cease, and the wounds close and heal with astonishing rapidity, leaving usually very little trace, except sometimes a raised cicatrice, as may have happened with St. Francis. St. Gemma's case lends credibility to the accounts of deep wounds in some of the elder stigmatics such as St. Mary Frances of the Five Wounds (1715-91). (In any case these claims are vindicated by the deep wounds actually observed in Padre Pio in this century).

Extraordinary as these deep stigmata are, they do not decisively contradict the naturalistic hypothesis. "Elizabeth's wounds deepened under suggestion and we cannot say to what depth they might not have proceeded had Dr. Lechler persisted with suggestion beyond the point that was medically ethical. Of course, it is possible to argue that Lechler's suggestions and counter-suggestions happened to coincide with Divine commands or (as would be said by the late Montague Summers, who was rather an extremist in these matters), that the sequence of events was contrived by the Father of Lies to promote atheismj an example of an "Infernal Miracle" perpetrated by the Adversary. En passant, for interested readers we may recommend as an entirely fictional but elegant and scholarly account of a diabolical parody of the stigmata, the learned and witty novel by Louis Bromfield. Entitled The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928) the novel introduces the ancient Adversary in the somewhat Rabelaisian persona of the pagan god Priapus. At the time of writing the case for a psychological factor in stigmatisation has received further support from the work of a Californian psychiatrist, Dr. Derek Agle, with a twenty year old girl, Rita, a member of an evangelical or pentecostal group given to an enthusiastic form of religious observance, which, of course, is a Protestant denomination of a fundamentalist kind. Since the age-of ten Rita has developed stigmata in the hands and on the brow every week on Thursdays and Fridays, accompanied by quite intense pain. She is described as a highly conscientious and serious person. Significantly the first onset of the condition occurred just a few days after reading a novel about Jesus' last week before death on the cross, which gave a heightened account of his sufferings. Dr. Agle obtained permission to hypnotize her; he gave her the suggestion that she could repress the stigmata at any time by repeating to herself a short verbal formula. This appears to have been efficacious.

The genesis of the mystic ring is akin to that of stigmata. Marie-Julie Jahenny (1850-1941) a somewhat exhibitionistic stigmatic of La Faudrais in Brittany, was in the habit of announcing the particular stigmata she would receive some time before they appeared; a fact strongly in favour of the auto• suggestion hypothesis. In an ecstasy in January I874 she predicted that she would plight her troth to her heavenly spouse on 20 February. According to the Abbe David, on the predicted day in the presence of 14 witnesses the ring-finger of the right hand became swollen and red beneath the skin. Shortly afterwards it bled. Within 30 minutes a ring shaped formation appeared. There is reliable evidence that Marie-Julie retained it for at least twenty years as a ring of fleshy tissue resembling a hoop which had sunk into the skin.

The tears of blood shed by St. Gemma and others, including Theresa Neumann at the onset of her stigmatisation on Good Friday 1926 and whenever she meditated on Christ's suffering, were observed by the French physician Dr. Parrott in the last century in a patient (presumably hysterical) who shed them while affected by violent grief. She bled also from the breast, hands and knees.

The sex difference in occurrence of stigmata.

It is a curious fact that, apart from St. Francis, only three or four cases of conditions akin to stigmatisation have been reliably reported as occurring in men, and these all in the present century. At first sight it might seem to follow from the correlation between hysteria and stigmatisation in view of the old belief in masculine immunity to hysteria. But this comfortable premise was shattered in the last century. Present estimates differ, but it seems that hysteria, in one form or another, occurs in men as frequently as it does in women. Retaining the naturalistic viewpoint there is no reason however either to deny the indirect link with hysteria or to suppose that the male stigmata are not produced by the same auto- suggestive mechanism as operates in women. The low incidence in men may be explicable in terms of biological or hormonal difference between the sexes, or by a lesser proclivity to brood on physical aspects of the crucifixion. (For sex differences in the incidence of inedia, see later).

One of the modern male stigmatics, Arthur Moock of Hamburg (born 1902 in Alsace) is a Protestant, and it has consequently been said by Catholic writers that his stigmata lack a religious meaning! However their appearance is heralded by visions of Christ approaching him with consoling words at times when he suffers from aching and a feeling of pressure in the head. The second case is that of Heinrich Fuehring, also of Hamburg (born in I892). Though he too was born of Lutheran parents, and is not a Catholic, his stigmata began at Easter 1951» very significantly, it would seem, while returning from a visit with Catholic companions to Theresa Neumann at Konnerareuth. Sitting on a bench near the altar in the sanctuary of Waldueren an apparition appeared to him and announced that in two weeks time he would receive the stigmata of Christ. Eighteen days later, after a violent headache, blood flowed from his hands and side. The photographs appended to this paper relate to a male stigmatist. The photographs were taken in the late 1960's by competent investigators. The subject's name was withheld. We have since seen one of these photographs (the Crown of Thorns) published in a television programme. The subject was said to be Otto Mook of Berlin; whether this is the same person as Arthur Moock of Hamburg we do not know, as no background information was given.

The poltergeist connection.

Poltergeist phenomena figure in the lives of many saintly people from Saint Dunstan in the tenth century down to Saint Jean Vianney and Padre Pio in modern times. These take the ffffffl of chaotic happenings, movements of objects, sounds of rapping, scratching and so on. In earlier periods these were regarded as the frolics of elves, goblins, or other nature spirits, or as attacks by the Devil or lesser demons. The latter explanation was especially favoured when the phenomena attended holy persons rather than the laity.

The occurrence of such "attacks" was usually interpreted as complimentary to the person concerned, an acknowledgement that their virtue had annoyed the great Adversary. However the actual phenomena in both secular and religious contexts are identical, which makes us supect a causation that is neither diabolic or angelic. In this, following many investogators, we are in harmony also with the Revd. Father Thurston, S.J. Because there is an overlap between stigmatisation and poltergeistry, we seek to ascertain features shared by poltergeist subjects and stigmatists, each taken as a group.

Strikingly enough the position in regard to overt hysteria is exactly the same with poltergiestry as with stigma tisation. Among the more violent poltergeist outbreaks which have been described, a considerable proportion of the poltergeist subjects, i.e. the person (usually a single one) on which the phenomena are centred, have overt and unmistakeable symptoms of hysteria (see A.R.G. Owen, Can We Explain the Poltergeist?. Garrett Publications, New York, 1964, Helix Press, Paplinder Distributing CO). Of course there are many cases in which there are no such symptoms. The situation is quite parallel to that with stigmatists. Religious apologists often indignantly repudiate the suggestion that there is something in common between stigmatisation and hysteria, on the ground that not all stigmatists are hysterical; which is true enough. However, from the point of view of inductive logic that is not the point. The association between hysteria and stigmatisation is a statistical one; what it tells us, however, is that we should look for some common factors operative both in the aetiology of hysteria and in the causes of stigma tisation. Such factors, if ascertained, will, of course, in the two phenomena (i.e. hysteria and stigmatisation) be allied with possibly totally distinct causative factors such as profound religious convictions of a rather specialised nature in the case of stigmatisation, and psychological repression of emotion in the case of hysteria. As these factors themselves though essentially distinct are not mutually exclusive they will occasionally exist together, thus producing the observed overlap of the hysterical and the stigmatical conditions. The fact tha£ very religious persons may control their emotions does not imply tha,t they have nonel

Interestingly enough the latest position in poltergeist studies mirrors that in respect of stigmatisation. While no poltergeist investigators suggest that all poltergeist subjects are hysterical, thay make the inference that anxiety, which is an underlying cause of all hysterics is an important precipitating or predisposing factor in poltergeistry. (See A.R.G. Owen, "Poltergeist Phenomena and , in Handbook of Parapsychology, ed. Martin Ebon, New American Library, New York, 1978.) Recently some parapsychologists have asked the question, "Anxiety is present in every home or community; how therefore can one specially associate it with poltergeistry?" (See Alfonso Martinez Taboas, "The Psychopathological Model of Poltergeist Phenomenal some criticisms and suggestions", Parapsychology Review. (1980, 11, 24-26). The question is perfectly valid but has a fairly simple answer drawn from inductive logic. In the first place the alleged correlation is not put forward as a total explanation. No one in their senses would suggest that anxiety is the sole cause of poltergeist phenomena. As we have said on several occasions (loc. cit.), a genetic or congenital factor has to be postulated to account for the comparative rarity of the poltergeist phenomenon. (In parenthesis it is worth saying that it is only from some points of view that the phenomenon is rare; on a world scale it could be regarded as relatively frequent — hence our use of the qualification comparative). An age factor, though of less importance, has also to be noted. More importantly we should acknowledge the relevance of arguments based not on mere association but on a quantitative relation between the factors that are being empirically associated. In simple terms an association will only manifest itself in a recognizable form when both A and B are quantitatively intense. Contrariwise if an association is manifest when A and B are both quantitatively large it is only logical to suppose that it exists when both features are weaker in intensity. These principles of inductive logic are not at all difficult; ordinary people in every walk of life use them every day. It is only recognizing them and putting into words that is difficult. One can be excused for reacting somewhat like Moliere's bourgeois gentilhomme when he was told what "prose" was; "I've been talking it all my life without knowing it!". In regard to the question as to the causative influence of anxiety in poltergeistry we have to add a further very important consideration. It was never suggested, at least by the present writers, that anxiety, even in the presence of the genetic factor, was adequate alone to trigger off poltergeist attacks. It is not just the anxiety itself which is important but how the anxiety is handled by the subject. It seems to be necessary that anxiety be not merely controlled but that it also fee repressed in the Freudian sense, i.e. pushed right out of consciousness. Thus poltergeist persons are to be sought among those who tend to repress emotion, but have the capacity to discharge the repressed emotion in surrogate physical activity which may also have a symbolic content. This capacity is a genetic or constitutional psychokinetic ability. The point of contact with hysteria is just that one of the factors in hysteria is the tendency to repress emotion into the unconscious. In stigmatists however the points of contact with hysteria are the tendency to auto-suggestion and an unconscious command of bodily processes. These two factors are the ones that facilitate the generation of hysterical symptoms, paralyses, deficiencies of vision, tics, comas, fits, and so on.

Another parallelism between the three conditions — being a poltergeist centre — being a hysteric — and bearing stigmata — consists in their shared malleability under suggestion. In poltergeist cases the investigators have to take care not to induce new phenomena by mentioning their possibility. Hysteria is notoriously subject to suggestion and to the phenomenon of "symptom substitution" — one symptom may be cured but replaced by a different one! We have already noted the power of hypnotic suggestion to modify stigmata.

Although poltergeist subjects usually seem quite unaware of any connection between themselves and the phenomena, a small proportion, such as Madame Kulagina, Uri Geller, and Matthew Manning, achieve a degree of conscious control, enabling them to engage in voluntary psychokinesis. There appears to be an interesting though rare parallelism between stigmatists and poltergeist subjects in this respect. We make this claim entirely on the basis of a verbal communication made to us in 1967 by the distinguished writer, investigator, and psychic sensitive, Mrs. Eileen Garrett, founder and first President of the Parapsychological Foundation, Inc. Mrs. Garrett spoke of a man she had known of an intellectual and reflective cast of mind. Although apparently not a priest or monk he was interested in religious topics. This gentleman told her that he could induce stigmata in himself voluntarily by mental concentration. He proceeded to make his words good then and there. In the course of a relatively short time the skin in the centres of his palms started to flake away. As she watched, Mrs. Garrett saw the raw red flesh become visible as the lesion developedl Thus the subject was able by conscious volition to imitate results of the kind that Lechler obtained by hypnosis. This, of course, makes the case for autosuggestion as an efficient cause of stigmatisation a strong one.

Epidemiological prediction.

It is claimed by theorists of the philosophy of science that the test of a scientific theory is its ability to predict 17

new facts that can he tested by fresh experiments or m observations. (As with many other principles of popular at the moment, this one is often over-stretched in a way that parallels other contemporary parrot cries such as the demand that all scientifically acquired facts cannot be accepted as such until there is a testable theory to account for them! In the face of this historically and logically indefensible piece of dogmatism it would be a bold person who would report any observation — which would imply the death of science). In the present survey we have claimed that on the basis of the observed facts some of the causes operative in psychoneuroses such as hysteria are also operative in poltergeist cases and in the paduction of stigmata. If we are right there should be a group of cases, even though rare ones, characterized by the occurrence of all three mi features, poltergeist happenings, stigmata, and overtly hysterical behavuour. As it happens, logically enough these can be found. As is to be expected by logic their igj frequency is low. Also we do not have any very recent ones; though we believe that if a very rigorous search were conducted such cases would present themselves. For the moment we will satisfy our curiousity with two instances narrated • in Can We Explain the Poltergeist? (A.R.G. Owen, 1972), but derived from the indefatigable Father Thurston, S.J. In each of these cases the poltergeist phenomena centred on a M person of deep religious feeling. The earlier case concerned Christina of Stommeln in the Rhineland, whose phenomena were observed around the year 1268 by a Dominican father — Peter gj of Dacia (i.e. Scandinavia) when the girl was about twenty- five years old. Her history is one of intense religious devotion. At the age of ten she plighted her troth to Christ > to be his spouse for ever; at thirteen she ran away to Cologne * to live a life of extreme austerity, starvation, and mortification with a community of Beguines. She longed to receive some stigmata or token that would keep Christ's sufferings mi continually before her mind. Interestingly enough, devotion alternated with losses of faith, and she had numerous visionary experiences — some tending to undermine her faith, while

— others reinforced it. Thurston says that it seems impossible to regard these experiences as other than the strange of a hysterical subject. The poltergeist phenomena seem to have been on a grand scale but completely — typical of many poltergeist subjects. The "ppecialite de la maison" was showers of indescribable filth, much of it "teleported". This may seem odd, but to poltergeist m connoiseurs reads as the most natural thing in the world. These showers, like the rain in the Bible, fell rather impartially, about equally on Christina and the spectators, including ^ Peter himself, between whom and Christina, there seems to have developed a romantic bond. Such affinities are almost a commonplace between "possessed" females in a religious context and their confessors and exorcists. Even St. Theresa of Avila, a kind of "iron maiden" for robustness of mind among mystics, was seriously embarrassed in her youth by her confessor and herself falling in love (see her Autobiography); fortunately, or unfortunately, according to one's point of view, the poor young man died of an illnessl In a more lurid context Father Surin, the Jesuit confessor and exorcist of Sister Jeanne of the Angels in the seventeenth centurt, was "infected" with the same disease as the nun herself and became "possessed"— a result doubtless encouraged not only by an absurd ideology but through emotional bonding to his suppliant. It was in this period that Christina received stigmatic wounds in the presence of Peter and others. Correspondingly, as is to be expected, she underwent repeated ectasies and raptures.

Thurston's other case also occurred in a country near to the so religious Rhineland; it concerned Domenica Clara Moes of Luxembourg. Born in 1833 she was, according to her own memoirs, favoured from her earliest years with a variety of beatific visions, including frequent appearances of her guardian angel who would take her miraculously on various journeys — a curious parallel to the'flights' of the shamans of the circumpolar and North American regions. She also suffered from a mysterious 'eye disease' which involved intermittent blindness for short periods. At the age of twelve she was completely blind for six weeks but cured "miraculously" by a visit to Trier to revere the Heiligen Rock — the "Holy Coat (Tunic or Robe)" which is reported to be Christ's seamless garment, and until recent times was exhibited in the cathedral there. In I858, when she was twenty-six she fell sick of another mysterious illness and was in bed for two years, thus anticipating Theresa Neumann and Berthe Mrasek, who were facultative paralytics in the same general geographical and cultural region of Europe some decades later. It was during this:illness that, in March i860, Dominica Clara's stigmata first appeared. In 1861 she and a friend, Anna Engels, founded a new religious convent in Luxembourg. For many years later she had visionary experiences as well as stigmatic scars and bleeding. The evidence for this is good,just as for a variety of poltergeist phenomena. Small objects tended to disappear but turned up again in an equally strange way; there was also a variety of inexplicable noises, as well as teleportation of water and large stones.

The future of stigmatisation.

Arging from the presumption of suggestibility and auto• suggestion as important factors in stigmatisation, we would — postulate a tendency for the frequency of stigmatists to increase, especially in view of the greater efficiency of communication in recent times, and the prevalence of investigative journalism. This tendency may be expected m to offset the regional decline in religion even among Catholic communities in the more developed parts of the world. We would also expect a tendency to redistribution of the m pattern of incidence, that is to say more instances in the New World, and in the Third World. Thus in 1977 interest was aroused by a stigmatised nun visiting Canada. She is

— Sister Susan Kurievilla of the Syrian Orthodox Church of South India, a branch of the Roman , and she runs a centre for prayer and the care of orphans, widows, and sick persons of all religious and Hindu castes in Kerala state. She disclaims any practice of brooding on the wounds of Christ. Data on the time spent on prayer, however, is not available. Characteristically her stigmata, (scars m on hands, feet, and forehead, and the "ferita" which blee'.d occasionally though slightly) occurred first on Good Friday, when she was 13 years old; they healed after three months

— and returned on Good Friday for the next four years. Thereafter the scars became permanent, bleeding sometimes on Fridays, and during Lent and Passion week.

In the New World among known recent stigmatists are Margaret Reilly, who died in 1937; (we are not aware of her being granted the title of Venerable or Blessed as yet). About mj the mid 1970's the Ontario newspapers reported a female stigmatist in the Orillia region of the Province. Few details were made known, other than the fact that she was a Catholic. J Above we implied that stigmatisaion was restricted to Catholics 1 (or perhaps some Orthodox Christians) especially those who engaged in mystical prayer. This assertion has now to be revised in consequence of the emergence of stigmatisation in a new milieu — Protestant fundamentalism. It would be hard to say that these churches or sects encourage anything closely equivalent to mystical prayer. However it is possible ^ that the same result is reached by other routes such as procedures with a hypnobic or hypnotic quality engaged in — collectively — repeated handclapping, singing of phrases : and choruses, even ones as simple as "Praise the Lord". These differ in milieu from the mystical prayers of the isolated religious person in the older religions, but like the music of Wagner or the chantings of * Seig Heil' and 'Heil mi Hitler* at Nazi, rallies can have an auto-hypnotic effect that by-passes the conscious mind and roots itself in the unconscious. We have already mentioned the case of Rita mi in the New Light Baptist Church at Oakland, California. Another interesting stigmatist is an evangelical preacher, Lucy Ryall, who appears to he the leader of her own fundamentalist Protestant denomination in New Mexico. (For this information, as with that concerning Rita, we are greatly indebted to an item in the television series, "Arthur C. Clarke's World of the Strange" made by Yorkshire Television, England, U.K.). Miss Ryall sings evangelical hymns through a microphone and her style is in some ways reminiscent of a "pop singer". The religious services at which she presides appear to have some of the quality of the old style revival meeting; members of the congregation, besides going into a kind of trance while singing and dancing, frequently collapse and roll around on the floor, meanwhile vocally praising the Lord. As for Miss Ryall, a Caucasian like the majority of her congregation, a "catty" commentator might say that like many charismatic leaders she is the victim of her own propaganda. Annually (at Easter of course) she becomes mildly stigmatised. Blood flows from the centre of the palms and the forehead. According to what is shown in the television pictures there are no deep wounds or residual scars; it is mainly a case of bleeding through the skin. Of course we do not know what length of time Miss Ryall devotes to prayer. However her case and that of Rita open up the intriguing possibility that the new fundmentalism may, albeit by slightly different routes,, open up a new flow of stigma tisation cases, as well as a new source of healing miracles, on the principle that one miracle makes many by the simple process of "creating faith".

Skin phenomena.

Mechanisms operative in the formation of skin lesions may be in some degree the same or similar to those entering into the aetiology of stigmata. Notoriously psychological factors play a prominent role in both the onset and healing of a variety of epidermal conditions. Thus rashes, attacks of hives, itching, etc. are very often signs of anxiety, stress, or nervous tension. We have ourselves witnessed the outbreak of a savage red rash, taking only a few minutes to form, simultaneously with the person concerned speaking of a painful past experience. A few minutes later, after the wave of anxiety had subsided, the rash started to fade, and was gone ten minutes later. Healing of more long lasting conditions by suggestion or by hypnosis is well-known and represented by very striking and well observed instances. Lesions of the foregoing kind are of course not very specifically patterned and tend to he distributed over whole regions of the integument, and are thus less interesting than those strange cases when the patterns of skin irritation appear to be not only restricted but meaningful. The case of a poltergeist girl, Eleonore Zugun, which wis of this kind, is an extremely important and significant one. In 1925, at the age of twelve or thirteen this peasant girl in Rumania became the centre of large scale and quite violent poltergeist activity, including bombardment with stones, movement and teleportation of domestic articles. The events were sufficiently dramatic for the priests to be called in with special masses, , and visits to a local . The phenomena persisted and eventually the psychic research workers Countess Wassilko-Serecki and Professor Thirring brought her to Vienna for study. Her teleportation phenomena were of much interest and were also observed later in London by Harry Price and other investigators. In the present context it is Eleanore's skin phenomena that we are concerned with. They occurred frequently and persistently over several months. There were numerous eye-witnesses to the marks, who said they saw them actually forming on the skin, and they were of two typesj long weals and oval-shaped "teeth marks", like bites. As one observer said "Soon after I entered the room a mark was growing on the girl's arm. As I watched it grew into a number of cruel-looking weals which might have been inflicted by a whip or thin cane within a few minutes the marks had disappeared". Of the teeth marks, Harry Price said they "were first visible as red indentations — the white surround gradually becoming red at the same time as the indentations became white, rising in a thick ridge above the level of the flesh. The ridge became quite white in the course of a few minutes and rapidly disappeared". One may be inclined to doubt, or at least tend to regard these testimonies as highly exaggerated, but this would be quite wrong! There exists a fifteen minute long motion picture showing the phenomena, which occur exactly as the English witnesses described. This movie was made by a professional film company in Vienna in 1925 and shows Countess Wassilko- Serecki and Professor Thirring with Eleonore. Silent, the film has sub-titles in German. (Copies are in the possession of the Society for Psychical Research, London, England, and of this Foundation, by courtesy of Mr. John Cutten). The movie shows Eleonore in a sleeveless and collarless dress. Professor Thirring draws a blunt stylus gently over the surface of her neck. Immediately a whitish mark, about four inches long appears. This suggests that Eleonore has a condition which Charcot and his colleagues at the Salpetriere in the nineteenth century found among their hysterical patients and called autoglyphic skin. The sub-titles then explain that Eleonore is obsessed with the idea that she is being persecuted by a demon whom she calls Dracur. This is a name for the Devil in Rumania and Styriet — the "vampire lands" where the romance of Dracula originated. We are then shown a pencil sketch of Dracu previously drawn by Eleonore. Curiously enough, the drawing as much as anything conforms to one's idea of a priest of the Orthodox Church in a long robe and endowed with a severe but not particularly sinister, facial expression. (The psychology behind this is by no means obvious. It should be noted that from the onset, some months before, of the girl's poltergeist phenomena, the relatives and neighbours, and perhaps the priests and nuns, had blamed "Dracu" for the happenings) Eleonore then takes a light hammer and strikes at the drawing which is laid flat on the table. After each blow she winces and cries out as if being pinched by the demon. Next the two investigators, the Countess and the Professor,hold the girl's hands. As we watch long weals rise on her cheeks, arms, and shoulders. Similarly tooth marks appear in the course of a few seconds! They closely resemble "urticarias" swellings and prominences of the skin, which occur during some kinds of allergic reaction, e.g. to contact of the skin with various plant species such as some of those belonging to the genus, Primula. (Here we speak from personal experience!). In passing, it is worth saying that having been in total ignorance prior to 1970 of the existence of this movie, we were most interested to discover how perfectly it confirmed the original eye-witness testimony. This fact should be quite an object lesson to those who frivolously reject the testimony of witnesses!

The readers are at liberty, should they so wish, to regard Eleonore Zugun*s phenomena as diabolical miracles. But this interpretation is no more necessary now than it has been in hundreds of poltergeist cases, some of which, according to the time or place in which they occurred hove been attributed to demons, elves, fairies, jinn, etc. etc. Indeed the fountain of folly bubbles and burbles perpetually. We may only look at the antecedents of the profitable and highly publicised motion picture The Exorcist, derived from a book of the same name by William Peter Blatty. The movie was directed by William Friedkin who had then a very great reputation as having directed a movftf about drug dealers, The French Connection. Rather disingenuously this was extensively publicised as being (based) on a true story. This was slightly unfair to the public ,who are not scholars able to detect the nuances of meaning separating "based on", "adapted from",J"being \ancL» after" an original. Although it was essentially a straight translation of Blatty's novel, the latter was an extremely free adaptation of a real poltergeist case which occurred in 19^9 in Mount Rainier, Maryland. The case started as a somewhat conventional or run of the mill poltergeist outbreak. It centred on a fourteen-year old boy; continual scratching noises under the floorboards of his bedroom were heard by everyone in his family. Later an armchair in the living room rose into the air; simultane .ously a vase flew across the room and smashed itself against the wall. The parents, who were Lutherans, consulted their minister, who took the boy to lodge in his household, but as often happens in these cases, things were worse than ever, and also took place at the boy's school. He was investigated at Georgetown University Hospital, but apparently not cured. Perhaps had he stayed there he might have recovered. Unfortunately his Lutheran parents had already called in the Catholic clergy, and he was sent to the Alexian Brothers Hospital at a considerable distance from his home, in fact as far as St. Louis; where the treatment for his illness seems to have consisted mainly in the sayings of Mass or readings of the Roman Ritual for by thie priests. He was, moreover, baptized into the Catholic faith and received Holy Communion. The result of all this highly suggestive symbolism on an already hysterical person was exactly as might have been predicted. He had numerous "fits"; he spoke in strange voices and in languages "recognized" as French and Latin, used very bad and abusive words; he barked, and growled, and hurled himself about. All that concerns us here, apart from the totally inept handling of the matter by the priests, is the occurrence of a stigmatic type of phenomena. As one priest said "Brandings would appear on his body, from which blood would actually flow". These brandings, or "welts" as some witnesses called them often took the form of words. "Spite" appeared many times, similarly "hell". Towards the end of the case it is said that the welts on the body spelled out the words "Satan, Satan, Go. Now, Now, Now". Soon after, the boy reverted to normal either because of, or in spite of, the ministrations of his spiritual advisers, whom we are sorry to say included members of the Society of Jesus, who should have known better. As we have noted, the Venerable Catherine Emmerich bore a stigmatic scar peculiar to herself, a Y-shaped cross on her chest. Padre Pio, in addition to other wounds, had a small inverted cross as a scar on his side near the heart. A contemporary stigraatist, Natuzza Evolo, born in Calabria, Italy in 1924, besides having stigmata of the "usual" kind also produces stigmatic wounds on her wrists in the form of a cross, also the Greek letters alpha and omega. (See Appendix I). Saint Clare of Montefalco in Umbria, Italy, died in 1308 at the age of thirty-three. She had said "If you seek the cross of Christ, take my heart; there you will find the suffering Lord". The nuns of her convent were more literal minded than the executors of Queen Mary of England and they excised her heart, which is preserved at Montefalco to this

day. They also dissected the organ?claiming to find in it a tiny formation of tissue resembling a crucifix of hardened white tissue, with the body of Christ and the lance and a Crown of Thorns. Today this formation is preserved in a glass case. A recent visitor says "The cross is fairly distinguishable, but you had to use great imagination to decipher the rest". (David Sox, Relics and Shrines, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1985.) It is possible that the nuns were led astray by the eye of faith, and the formation was an entirely natural product of which Saint Clare became to some degree aware by the occurrence of some kind of sensation of discomfort. But we cannot be sure that a stigmatisation process may not take place internally in obedience to causes similar to those producing external ones.

Fragrances,

Because of the opportunity for fraud in darkened seance rooms, it is hard to attach much significance to the fragrances (usually of known species: rose, verbena, or sandalwood) common at spiritualist seance rooms in the last century. Peculiar smells, often unpleasant, reported in contemporary poltergeist cases are also difficult to assess. But stories concerning the "", perfumes manifesting in the vicinity of persons of holy life, are numerous. Testimony was very abundant with regard to the fragrance which clung to everything touched by St. Mary Frances of the Five founds, to the scent of vivuole mammole (a species of violet) associated with St. Catherine of Ricce (1522-29). These saints were stigmatics, as was Sister Mary of Jesus Crucified who died in I878, being similarly favoured according to her Carmelite companions at both Bethlehem and Pau (France). Similarly the nuns at Reckshill (New York State) claimed that a wonderful fragrance persisted in their chapel after a visit by the stigmatic Margaret Reilly (died 1937). In the case of St. Veronica Guiliani (I636-I727) it was definitely believed that the scent proceeded from her stigmata. The same is said of Father Pio Forgione, and there appears to be competent medical testimony as to the objective reality of the scent, which is variously compared to roses, violets, or incense. These fragrances do not seem to be invariably associated with stigmata, but the frequency of reports is very numerous. Thus when the wound on the forehead of Saint Rita of Cascia is described as "evil-smelling" we are inclined to accept it as a true report just because it is the opposite of what would be conventionally assumed in this field of study.

No chemical analysis of stigmatic blood yet published has claimed to find aromatic substances therein. The door is by no means closed to a naturalistic explanation. Agreeable odours are occasionally reported by physicians in connection with various maladies such as acetonomis where there is a scent of russet apples. It is not inconceivable that profoundly religious temperaments may be correlated in some degree with metabolic effects in which both biochemical and psycho-somatic factors participate, is a curious footnote we recall a statement by the Revd. Dr. Henry More (1614-1687), the Cambridge "Platonist" philosopher, an ordained Anglican priest, and Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He said that he exuded a very sweet and delicate odour which permeated his clothes and bed linen. As a Protestant there was no possibility of him being canonized, but possessed of a very kind and gentle nature, he could certainly be described as a saintly person. As one of his biographers says "Mystical devotion was the chief feature of his character, a certain radiancy of thought which carried him beyond the common life without raising him to any artificial light for his humility and charity were not less conspicuous than his piety".

The question of fragrance is in some degree allied to the problems of incorruptibility and of dyring "in the odour of sanctity". A surprisingly high proportion of saints have been exhumed after beatification and their bodies then discovered to be in a remarkably good state of preservation. Also the cadavers of many saintly personages are sometimes alleged to emit a fragrance which sometimes persists for months or even years. It is not only of stigmatists that this is asserted. Another strange claim is the persistence of warmth in the corpse long after life is extinct. For that reason we consider the phenomenon known as incendium a'moris, the flames of love, in the living. Also, because it is relevant we have to mention inedia, that is, failure to eat. Flames of love.

Some very famous Saints, such as Catherine of Genoa (1447- 1510) and Mary Magdalen of Pazzi (I566-I607) were reputedly sufferers from incendium amoris, ascribed to the warmth of their love of God, so that even in winter they sought for cooling winds, and cold compresses. In the case of the boy saint Stanislas Kostka (1550-68) who died during his novitiate we may suspect an actual infection. In other cases we might suppose the ardours to have been subjective. But Cardinal Crescenzi said of St. Phlip Neri (1515-95) that the touch of his hand was as from one in a raging fever, and the attendants of St. Catherine in her last illness deposed that blood discharged by the Saint was exceptionally hot, even for a patient in fever. Nuns affirmed at the beatification process of Serafino of Dio (died (I699) that it scorched them if they touched her. A Life of Mary Villani (1574-1670) published in 1974 says that in the autopsy nine hours after death the surgeon found the heart too hot to hold.

Of the saints previously mentioned, St. Philip Neri was neither stigmatised nor hysterical, but Mary Villani and Mary Magdalen were stigmatics, which may be relevant. In our own day the incendium was one of the phenomena of Father Pio Forgione (1887-1968) of the Capuchin monastery of San Giovanni Rotundo near Foggia. His stigmata, received first in 1915, were declared in 1923 by the Holy Office not to have been proved to be supernatural. Father Pio was something of a latter-day Cure of Ars, because, though very reserved and retiring, like St. John Vianney, he was also a great confessor, and the same gift of telepathy or "reading of hearts" is alleged of him, as well as other psychic abilities. It is said that as a novice at Benevento he occasionally ran a fever with a temperature so high as to break the clinical thermometer. Special measurements showed a blood heat of 112°F (45°C).

The modern discovery of biofeedback which can be used to raise temperature locally in the body as well as to vary blood circulation and pressure may be relevant in this context, as well as recent claims by yogi visiting the U.S.A. such as Swami Rama, whose ability to modify the functioning of his vascular system was studied by Dr. & Mrs. Elmer Green at the Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas, in I969-I97O.

Fever of an hysterical rather than an organic origin appears to be rare as an isolated symptom, but seems to occur occasionally in conjunction with other hysterical symptoms 1 as in the case of Dr. Schliner's patient. In this connection it may he appropriate to mention Saint Teresa of Avila (1515- 1582), a crucial figure for the interpretation of mysticism because of her writings, which give a detailed description of her spiritual life and of all her doubts, hesitations, and sufferings, in her search for God. Also she combined the life of religious contemplation with an intense activity and commonsense efficiency in practical affairs, such as founding new convents of the reformed Carmelite rule, and carrying reform into the Carmelite monastries. A woman of the highest intelligence, she had a commanding but highly attractive personality, frank, affectionate, gay and witty. Yet withal she suffered from hysterical illness; certainly in the first half of her life, when she was rarely well. Her ailments as she tells us in her Autobiography, included frequent fainting fits and comasl "pains in the heart" (presumably in the chest and cardiac region), distributed pain everywhere from the head to the feet, and general paralysis. It may be possible that Teresa was afflicted with some obscure metabolic or neurological disease, which in her time could not be diagnosed. However many physicians have agreed in making the retrospective diagnosis of hysteria. The fact that she cured herself rather suddenly by appeal to St. Joseph is a good confirmation of the hypothesis. In the present context it is intersting to note that she also suffered, as she says, from an intermittent fever. (En passant, the Church has appointed her the patron saint of sufferers from headaches). Saint Teresa was not herself a stigmatic, but she had an experience somewhat reminiscent of those of Saint Francis and Saint when the latter received the "invisible stigmata". Teresa had a vision in which an angel came with a lance dipped in fire "a spea of divine love" with which he pierced her heart.

Occasionally it seems a restricted region of the body can have its temperature raised by a hysterical or similar mechanism. Thus the left arm of a "poltergeist" girl, Angelique Cottin, investigated in Paris in 1846 gave off a gentle heat, its temperature was elevated above that of her body, and the other limbs. The arm trembled and underwent frequent contraxtions and quiverings. She had frequent intense stingings in the wrist associated with paroxysms. The diagnosis of hysteria is not, of course, totally reliable, but is, at least, consistent with the symptoms. Resistance to heat.

It would be unwise to speculate over-much on incombustibility or immunity to fire, because little of this nature has been asserted since the sixteenth century when it was said that Venerable Domenica del Paradiso (1473-1553) could carry live charcoal in her hands, a useful accomplishment prior to the invention of matches. Numerous incidents of this sort were reported of Si. Francis of Pacia (1416-1507), such as putting his hands into boiling oil or mending hot lime-klins. St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1389) and her clothes are said to have been miraculously preserved from scorching when in an ecstasy she lay for an appreciable time in contact with the kitchen fire. Father Thurston has attempted to erect some parallels between mystic incombustibility and the practice of fire-walking, as well as the feats of the medium Danial Dunglass Home (I833-I886), but the subject seems at present beyond the reach of critical analysis.

Inedia and anorexia.

Inedia, or living with very little food, varies from instances like that of the Cure' of Ars, (1786-1859) where great activity is maintained on a very light diet,to cases often hailed as miraculous where the individual, almost invariably a woman, apparently survives for months and years on no food and little drink. In his recent book (Holy Anorexia, University of Chicago Press), Rudolph Bell, a professor of history at Rutgers University, notes that of forty women in Italy who were canonized in the 14th century about half were enedics.

Many attempts have been made to prove by observation that fasting is complete. Occasionally they end tragically in death; which suggests that when unsupervised the hunger- striker does in fact take a little nourishment. Inedics are not always Roman Catholics or even particularly religious. Usually there is evidence of nervous disorder; the inedic is bedridden with a mysterious illness, or is given to fits or trances. Hysteria inedia or is a very well-known disorder, and can end in death. Often the anorexic is literally incapable of accepting solid food and rejects it by automatic choking or vomiting outside of conscious control. It is not fully understood why inedics can survive for such long periods and it would be foolish to underestimate residual difficulties of naturalistic explanation. But there is no obvious feature by which inedia in the devout differs from anorexia in hysterical persons. Religious inedics often show other signs of hysteria; female stigmatics are frequently inedics also. One of the more recent stigmatics mentioned above, namely Sister Susan Kuravilla, is also, it seems, an extreme inedic. Since 1950, she claimed, she had taken no other food than the Communion wafers and minute quantities of honey, grape juice, or ginger concentrates — "not more than two ounces in a week". Doctors who examined her in Canada pronounced her quite healthy though physically slight. In this connection it should be noted that although her height (five feet, sixty inches 152 cm) is not great, her weight is more than proportionally light, namely 80 pounds only. This encourages a question. In the course of at least half a century in trying to pursue the anomalous, the strange, the "miraculous" we have learned one lesson at least. A surprisingly large proportion of questions relating to the unknown reveal what we still do not know concerning the supposedly known and understood. Thus we do not really know the limits of tolerance of the human frame to under nourishment. Until this is answered we cannot pontificate concerning the minimum diet for life and activity.

Incorruption.

As we have said, a large number of holy persons have escaped decay of the body after death to a remarkable degree. Something like a hundred cases are known. In only a few cases in the Roman Church has beatification or canonization been authorised on the basis of incorruptibility, though in the Eastern Church in earlier days at least it seems to have been a sine qua non. For centuries in the west the procedure has been for the process or hearings to be concluded and then if the verdict is favourable the supporters of the cause enthusiastically and hopefully disinter the remains. If the body is well preserved this is taken as yet further confirmation of the saint's heroic virtue and an opportunity for further rejoicing. If however the remains are mere bones and dust it is not taken as reflecting on the sanctity of the deceased. Indeed many of the Church's greatest saints have'-been as corruptible as the next man and include Saint Dominic, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint Ignatius Loyala. However some of the most famous and popular saints have been incorrupt. Thus Bernadette of Lourdes (1844-79) was found incorrupt in 1909 though with the face brown and the eyes sunken. Only bones were revealed when the "little Theresa", Saint Therese of Liseux was disinterred. But things were different with the "great Theresa", Saint Teresa of Avila. A violet odour and a fragrant oil were said to distil from her tomb, and when it was opened in 1583. nine months after her death, the body was found undecayed. — Star photo bv EI*I Camte ? HANDS, FEET AND FOREHEAD of Sister Susan Kuruvilla show the same The nun, who runs a prayer centre and hostel for the needy in southerns wounds Jesus reportedly suffered on the cross and from the crown of thorns. India, eats virtually nothing. She is visiting relatives in Don Mills.) Saint Catherine of Genoa's remains were left for about eighteen months in their first resting-place. However the spot was believed to be damp so the coffin was taken out and opened. "The holy body was found entire from head to foot without any lesion". We have mentioned how the body of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order was not preserved. However Saint Francis Xavier.the great missionary to the Far East, and one of Loyola's first seven followers, provided a very interesting example of incorruption. He died of fever in China in 1552. His body was packed in quicklime and sent to Goa in India. When the casket was opened the body was still fresh. It has been examined and exhibited many times since; although somewhat darkened and dry,it appears to be essentially intact. Among stigmatists who have been incorrupt we must list Rita of Cascia mentioned above.

Unlike stigmatisation the Church did not have to wait for a millenium prior to the first observation of incorruptibility. Saint Ambrose of Milan (340-397) wrote to Saint Augustine of Hippo (35^-^30) concerning the body of a martyr Nazarius which along with one Celsus had been found buried in a garden outside Milan. Speaking as an eyewitness Saint Ambrose says "we saw the martyr's blood as fresh as if it had been shed that same day. Further, his head, which the wretches had cut off, was so perfect and free from corruption with all the hair and the beard, that it looked to us, at the time we moved it, as if it had been washed and laid out for inspection there in the tomb .... Also we were overwhelmed at the same time with so heavy a fragrance that it surpassed all perfumes in sweetness". Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music was supposed to be a Christian martyr who was killed in her house at the spot in the Trastevere district of Rome where her church now stands. The story goes that in the ninth century Pope Paschal I, who collected large numbers of relics for the churches of Rome, dreamt that her body was in the catacomb of Saint Callixtus, and it was duly found there, and on disinterment was incorrupt, after presumably more than six centuries. After another six hundred years in 1599 the tomb in her church was opened and a sculptor instructed to carve a replica of exactly what had been seen. This sculpture is there today together with an inscription by the sculptor certifying it to be an accurate portrayal of the still incorrupt body.

The Reformation in Britain was completed about four centuries ago, thus readers brought up within the British sphere of culture may be unaware of some interesting English incorruptibles. These include persons of royal birth, such as Stheldreda, the Abbess of Ely, and daughter of King Anna of East Anglia. Married successively to a Welsh princeling and then to a son of the King of Northumbria, she eventually was granted rele^ce from her marriage vows. Her asceticism, evidenced by her taking few meals or baths, as well as her success in intercession on behalf of suppliants desiring healing miracles, made herself and Ely very famous. Sixteen years after her death in 679 her remains were found "as free from corruption as if she had just died and been buried on that very day". At the Reformation Etheldreda's body was destroyed or lost,-except for a hand which is now in St. Etheldreda's Roman Catholic Church, and resembles brown parchment stretched over bones, shrivelled flesh and muscular tissue.

King Edward the "Confessor" (who died, as every schoolboy knows, in 1066) was regarded by many as a saint even in his own lifetime. Buried in Westminster Abbey in that year, the body was exhumed in 1102 and found to be perfectly incorrupt. One of England's best loved saints, even to the present day, is the gentle St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, now called the Holy Island, in his honour, off the coast of Northumberland. He died in 68?. His remains were later taken to Durham cathedral. His sepulchre was opened in 1104 and the body discovered to be perfectly preserved, flexible and exhaling a "heavenly fragrance". This statement was proved in a curious way not to be merely a pious invention. In 1537 Henry VIII's commissioners arrived in Durham to gather treasure and put down idolatry. They found Cuthbert "lying whole, incorrupt, with his face bare, and his beard as of a fortnight's growth" and were sufficiently moved to allow it to be reburied. As the commissioners were likely to be as hardboiled as their royal master and his minister Thomas Cromwell it is probable that the story is true, for otherwise it would not have been the kind of thing to be invented. However in 1827 the remains were examined again and found to consist only of an enrobed skeleton. It is possible therefore that incorruptibility, even though maintained for several centuries}may yet be nullified either by passage of time or by transfer of the corpse.

The preservation of the flesh of holy persons appears to involve a degree of caprigiousness. One can sympathize with the words of Montague Summers who said in his book The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, (tfider, London, 1950), written, by the way, on entirely Medieval lines, unlike

Father Thurston's7"the Divine Plan in respect of incorruption has not yet been made clear to human intelligence". However human intelligence can take us some way in the direction of a normal or naturalistic explanation. Outside the religious sphere there are thousands of examples of bodies that have survived for centuries or millenia without enbalming. Quite typical are the numerous mummies of Peru. Here the operative factor seems to be not heat but dryness. Experience with vaults suggests that cool, dry, moving air is conducive to preservation while heat, moisture, and stillness of the atmosphere have the opposite tendency. Forensic medicine, while tending to confirm the foregoing, also suggests that leanness of body is a help, as well as absence of rigor mortis. Now the majority of holy persons, while not necessarily enedics or anorexics, tend to be ascetic rather than self- indulgent, and therefore on the lean side. (Saint Thomas Aquinus is almost unique among the Blessed in having been corpulent). Furthermore, rigor mortis is, according to forensic scientists, very much a function of the tension of the muscles at the time of death. Those who are fortunate enough to pass easily out of this life in a relaxed mood of acceptance or even of hopefulness, which is exactly what is told of many religious, tend to manifest little or even no rigor; their corporeal remains stay flexible. Thus we could compose a receipe for those of our readers who might seek post mortem preservation of their physical being. Eat sparingly, cultivate a calm equanamity of mind in one's last years, and be interred in a dry cool vault with some air movement! The alternative is dry sand in a cool desert as in Peru and in China. See "China's Blond Bombshell" in the Appendix I.

However this does not seem to be the whole story. As usual in any honest enquiry, nothing is simple, nothing is easy! The foreging explanation would seem quite adequacy to relate to those holy persons such as Saint Bernadette Soubirous, :and many others whose post-mortem appearances became somewhat mummified. But a number of cases seem to exhibit rather different characteristics. Thus moisture does not always prove fatal to the continued solidity and shapeliness of the flesh of the deceased. Moisture sometimes produces saponification with the internal tissues converted into a lind of ammoniacal soap, called adipocere, or gras de cadavre, while' the skin becomes mummy-like. The body of Blessed Marie Pelletier was found in this condition when exhumed 35 years after death. Whether conversion into soap is destiny that would be welcomed by aspirants to spiritual development is a question we leave to others. Saponification with a mummified integument is an outcome that quite possibly lies within the natural order. Similarly limited exposure to damp followed by incorruption may also be rare but natural, as with Saint Catherine of Genoa and Saint Teresa of Avila. But Saint Charles Borromeo's case seems more difficult; the moisture in his vault corroded two successive coffin lids but the body stayed in good condition.

An interesting case is that of Saint Charbel Maklouf, a monk of the Maronite Christian Church, and thus neither Roman Catholic nor Orthodox. His monasiay was in the mountains of northern Lebanon, and he died on Christmas Eve I898 at the age of seventy. He was laid in a monk',s tomb without coffin or enbalming. He was exhumed after about seven weeks because the villagers said there was a bright light around the tomb. Because of heavy rains the body was found floating on mud, but in perfect condition, as if it had been just placed there. It is said that subsequently a liquid resembling blood had seeped out through a crack in the coffin wherein Saint Charbel was placed. It is claimed that in the early days it was sufficient to soak the body to such a degree that its clothing was changed twice a week. The body was last examined in 1950» and is said to be totally free of any corruption but still generating the same blood and watery fluid. However moisture alone does not provide adequate explanation for a number of other strange cases.

When Blessed Anna Maria Taigi (I769-I837) was exhumed in 1868, the surgeon reported that the corpse resembled that of a person only three days dead. The skin was soft and discharged an inoffensive and somewhat aromatic fluid, recalling the balsam or oil which on other occasions have been reported of the bodies of holy persons, such as Saint Teresa of Avila. Another puzzling feature claimed for bodies which preserve a fresh appearance after death, is that the blood vessels remain full of liquid blood so that the corpse is capable of bleeding. Such was the case with Saint Francis Xavier when removed from the quicklime, and, it is claimed, some seventy years after his death. Another problem is why only some organs of certain religious persons are preserved while the rest decays. Cases in point are the tongue of Saint Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) foxtnd intact in 1263, the rest of the body having decomposed. The fact was attested by Bonaventure, a fellow Franciscan, indeed the head of that Order, who himself was canonized in 1482. Of Saint Bridget of Sweden, the heart alone was preserved. In summation it may be fair to say that while there is a strong presumption that the majority of cases of incorruption are natural, there is yet a deviant group of which it would be presumptious to assay a verdict. Very recently, according to the Standard, of London, England, of 2? Feb. 1985, the Vatican has been concerned with the discovery that the body of Cardinal Schuster of Milan shows no sign of corruption after his death, now thirty-two years ago. There is a movement afoot for his beatification. Although incorruption is not a requirement its occurrence cannot fail to help advance the cause. Some embarrassment results however from the fact that the Cardinal is still remembered as an open admirer of Fascism, a friend of Mussolini up to the dictator's death in 1945, and an enthusiastic supporter of the Abbysinian War. Perhaps when the time comes the then Pope, whoever he may be, will do something of the same kind as Benedict XIII did with Saint Catherine of Ricci, and declare that the Cardinal's merits have to be considered apart from his politics. (It is also said that "injection marks" have been found on the body, suggesting that the preservation is artificial, but that is a different question again). En passant *.?e could say that if their politics were a consideration few of the Saints would qualify. The great saints of the Counter-Reformation, Teresas, Loyalas, and the like -- would have regarded religious toleration, democracy, and the Constitution of the United States as the Devil's workl

Padre Pio Forgione of San Giovanni Rotondo.

Saint Francis of Assisi actually was a layman, and it is a remarkable fact that only one ordained priest is known to have been a stigmatic; this was Francesco Forgione, better known as Padre Pio, who died only in 1962, having become the most famous stigmatic of all time. He was born in 188? into a very poor but respectable peasant family in the village of Pietrelcina in the Appenines of southern Italy, near Benevento, roughly halfway between Naples and the Gargano region. As a child he was intelligent and healthy taking an interest in religion at a very early age. He was also exceptional in having a very intense feeling for the abundant instances of poverty and illness in that very indigent nneighbourhood, and furthermore showing a strong impulsion to asceticism, choosing for example, to sleep on the hard floor of an outhouse rather than in his bed. Having done well at the local school and also come to the attention of the local archpriest (presumably the Roman equivalent of an Anglican rural dean) Francesco was, in 1902, allowed to enter the Capuchin monastry at Morcone, near Campobasso, as a novice and a student for the priesthood; he adopted Pio as his name in religion. He later took courses at other monastic seminaries, finally becoming ordained as a priest in 1910 at the age of twenty-three. His piety was already so celebrated that a large number of people from Pietrelcina and other places in the district came to hear him perform his first Mass in the cathedral at Benevento.

At the time he was so emaciated on account of his deliberately chosen meagre diet and the long days of prayer and study that he inflicted on himself that the authorities suspected him of being tubucular and to be too frail for most priestly or monastic duties. In this belief they were encouraged by the first of the strange physiological phenomena that Padre Pio manifested — it seems to have been of the same nature as the "Flames of Love"; he ran excessively high temperatures said to break the clinical thermometers. But despite this apparent sign of fever he survived his rigorous regimen of fasting, penances, and praying night and day. He was therefore sent to Pietrelcina to assist his old patron the archpriest, in the hope that his duties could, if necessary, be minimised.

At this stage it should be mentioned that during the period prior to ordination both in his cell at the seminaries where he studied and in his room when visiting his family at Pietrelcina, Pio was subject to what many religious, both then and now, would describe as attacks by the Devil. On occasions Pio saw a large black dog glowing like a firefly. At other time, particularly in the evening, screams or thuds would be heard while Pio was alone in his room. On going in friends or relatives would see the room in total confusion, — books and ink, furniture and bedding thrown around. Pio, apparently uninjured, would be silent, offer no explanation, and motion them to withdraw. Before long Pio found his own method of inhibiting the visions and the occurrences. He would say Viva Gesu! and any incipient disorder would subside for the night. Students of poltergeist phenomena will tend to interpret this rationally as exemplifying paranormal but not supernatural happenings. Poltergeist phenomena, visions associated with the Adversary, as well as the ability of the person involved to inhibit the phenomena by appropriately chosen rituals, tally well with the psychological theory of poltergeist activity, and relate it to the profound stresses which must accompany any individual attempt to live a life of total self denial in the pursuit of "heroic virtue". But we have no desire to force this conclusion on the reader. Such happenings are in fact almost a commonplace in hagiography from St. Anthony and St. Dunstan down to modern times such as the "diabolicMpersecutions of Saint John Vianney, the Cure" of Ars in France, who in some respects resembled Padre Pio, albeit with many differences. In 1914 the first world War came. Padre Pio was conscripted? the army medical examiners found him physically fit; he was put on hospital duties. He became ill, was sent home on sick leave. On returning to his unit he was invalided out, refusing the offer of a pension. In 1917 he became a member of the small Capuchin monastery called Saint Mary of the Grace comprising only six or seven brethren, in the tiny village of San Giovanni Rotondo, which was then very isolated. The nearest city was Foggia, but the village was halfway up the massif called Monte Gargano ,(a somewhat barren limestone massif, next to the Adriatic sea) and then accessible only on foot. Padre Pio was destined to make this little congregation famous throughout at least the Catholic world, and the goal of an endless stream of pilgrims. He remained there until his death.

Prior to his arrival at San Giovanni Rotondo he had been the subject of a strange event which contained the shape of things to come. On September 20th 1915 while at home at Pietrelcina, about noon, Padre Pio had been praying in the outhouse previously mentioned. He ran from the hut waving his hands with a look of agony on his face and seeking a bucket of water in which to quench a burning sensation in his hands. Then he stopped and walked slowly back to the hut, where his mother and the archpriest later found him. He reported a burning in his hands. The archpriest later interpreted the event to Signore Forgione; Vhe has received the invisible stigmata, the secret of the Lord". The archpriest went on to say that the event was "A message from Jesus Christ to Padre Pio that he has been chosen to suffer like Jesus on the Cross, so that his suffering is offered to humanity. That is to say, one man suffers for others, who are spared suffering. One man carries the burden" En passant we should say that this is a special application of a thesis often used in the Catholic church as a means of comfort to sufferers from tragic ailments, e.g. fatal diseases of children; they are declared "victim" persons, "chosen" to assist Christ in his sufferings to redeem mankind from the burden of sin. This is clearly well meant, whether or not it is factually true, and may be of some comfort to the victims and their relatives. A propos of the event itself, which was objective at least to the degree that Pio's pain was real, irrespective of whether it was externally caused or, instead, merely generated by completely endogenic processes of a mental or neurophysiological kind, we may note a characteristic of stigmatic phenomena — their tending to occur on anniversaries. The typical stigmati will commence his phenomenon on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, or, if he or she is a hebdomadal stigmatic, every Friday or Thursday. The day of Pio's invisible stigmata was the day that the parish of Pietrellcina was celebrating the stigmatisation of St. Francis. We can note also the fact that Pio's parents had given him the baptismal name of Francesco after the Saint. In the Catholic world among the devout the day of the Saint for whom one is named is often more important than one's birthday. We may recollect Charcot' patient who was healed of her neurosis on her Saint's day, this suggestion having been previously made to her.

We may note en passant that "invisible stigmata" had been claimed before by various religious including Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)• She said her stigmatic scars could not be seen because she had prayed that they be made invisible to others. A century later Pope Sixtus IV condemned any mention of St. Catherine's stigmatisation as an offence. The reason is not far to seek; He was himself a Franciscan and favoured that Order, who resented the Dominicans, of whom Catherine had been a Tertiary Sister, acclaiming her stigmatisation as a miracle. The wished to monopolize this sign of grace for their own founder Saint Francis. Catherine however was, in a manner of speaking, safely out of the papal reach, having been canonized in l46l during the reign of Pope Pius II. Destined to make further progress in popular and ecclesiastical veneration she was eventually named Patron Saint of Italy along with Saint Francis himself, and in 1970, on account of her writings, especially the Dialogue, was named a Doctor of the Church. Looking at the matter from the present point of view it would seem likely that her stigmatic pains were "real" enough and possibly she "saw" the marks when in visionary states. Like so many other stigmatics she was no stranger to mystical prayer and experienced numerous raptures and ecstasies.

After about a year at the Fr:ary of Santa Marie delle Grazie at San Giovanni Rotondo during which Pio had quietly continued, engaging in prayer and performing his duties as a friar, a second great event happened. It should be explained that the Capuchin Order is an offshoot of the Franciscans and naturally revere St. Francis of Assisi. At Santa Marie delle Grazie the friars celebrated the Saint's stigma tisation on the 17th of September. When this day came round in 1918 it fell on a Wednesday; the following Friday Padre Pio was in the choir giving thanks after Mass. A cry was heard and Pio was found lying on the floor bleeding profusely. It eventuated that he had "wounds" in both hands and both feet and in the right side. These stayed with him the rest of his life. The ferita wound persisted as a shallow scar in the shape of a cross. The hand wounds were just below the middle finger and penetrated right through. They were bounded by a brown scar but bled about a cupful a day. A great deal of investigation followed, photography and examination by doctors. Eventually the medicals agreed that no fraud was involved. Outside Italy Padre Pio soon became famous and the genuineness of the stigmata (in the sense at least that there was no fraud) was accepted in many Catholic circles. However many Catholics in Italy itself became hostile. Although Pope Benedict XV was on his side, for some years Pio was ordered to stay in seclusion, apart even from his brother friars. The restrictions became even more severe in the reign of the next Pope, Pius XI, but were lifted in consequence of another strange event. For some time people had reported seeing or being visited by Padre Pio, apparently in the flesh. However in view of Pio's restriction of movement it became clear that these appearances could not have been in the flesh unless the Father had been actually teleported. In 1929 a very saintly priest in the Vatican was praying in a chapel in the Vatican when he saw a Capuchin monk, whom he recognized as Padre Pio praying at the tomb of a former Pope. The priest went to tell the then Pope, Pius XI, whoy accepted the fact philosophically and said "What good is it to restrict his movements?".

The remainder of Padre Pio's life, nearly forty more years, was spent in the same daily routine at San Giovanni Rotondo. As many people as could get in came to the church, specially built and adjoining the Friary, to hear Pio saying Mass daily. He also, like St. John Vianney, spent several hours a day hearing confessions. No restrictions were placed on visitors entering the Friary and the related buildings. Pio would only hear the confessions of those speaking Italian or Latin. Gifts he received all went to the treatment of disease, and a special hospital was built there, out of donations. The monastery was more or less thrown open to all visitors, who were allowed to move around freely and catch a sight of Padre Pio, the other friars devoting thmselves mainly to keeping reasonable order. Naturally the once tiny hamlet of San Giovanni has grown into a sizable town. Sanctity and the paranormal.

The majority of cases of stigmatisation have stayed within the bounds of what is conceivably normal, even by the standards of the Roman Catholic Church, which in respect of many canonized persons, such as Saint Gemma Galgani, has explicitly excluded the stigmata as not being necessarily supernatural or signs of grace. However, both in stigmatists and other religious persons we encounter other phenomena. These are more or less what outside the religious field we would incline to describe as paranormal. That is to say, they closely resemble the kind of happenings that in psychical research are called ESP (i.e. extrasensory ), which comprises telepathy, clairvoyance, and perhaps precognition, P.K. (i.e. psychokinesis) and teleportation; also we ought to list "psychic" photography and the appearance of "messages" on audiotapes. We discuss the paranormal in the context of the religious life in the following sections.

Psycho-kinesis.

Psycho-kinesis is the name given in parapsychology to the movement of objects by means unknown to physics. It occurs in poltergeist outbreaks and is alleged to happen in seance rooms. Catholic writers recognise "diabolical assaults" on the religious, which bear a considerable resemblance to poltergeist phenomena. Otherwise psycho-kinesis is rarely alleged of the more recent Saints. Howverthe term telekinesis is applied to the spontaneous flight of the Host (the wafer of consecrated bread in the Mass) to the mouth of a divinely favoured -recipient. Aspirants to a reputation for sanctity might fraudulently conceal a wafer in the mouth prior to announcing the miracle, as seems to have been done by Vittoria Bondi in the time of Benedict XIV. However when the Cure' of Ars said that once the Host detached Itself from his fingers and placed Itself upon the tongue of a communicant we cannot doubt his veracity. There remains the possibility of a or a false memory. It is also possible that the Cure' produced the "miracle" himself by unconscious psychokinesis having been for many years the centre of poltergeist activity.

Teleportation or apportation, the mysterious conveyance of objects into closed rooms, is alleged both of poltergeist cases and the mediumistic seance. Phenomena analogous to teleportation met with in connection with Saints are the alleged miracles of abundance. The heaps of corn in the granary of the"Filles de la Croix" at La Poye in Poitou were mysteriously replenished over a continuing period around 1824 af^Saint Andrew Fournet (1752-1834) had prayed over them. Of this Saint it is said that whatever was needed in the way of supplies for the orphanage, he got as if he plucked them from thin airJ One is at a loss what comment to make on St. John Bosco's basket containing initially only a score of rolls which in I860 provided, it seems, enough bread for his 300 students. Interestingly enough no other marvels are narrated of "Don Bosco" (1815-88), not even ecstasies.

We shall return to questions of psychokinesis and teleportation in connection with Natuzza Evolo.

Levitation.

Levitation is alleged of comparatively few saints which suggests it is not a hagiographic commonplace. However, Professor Leroy's scholarly review lists 50 traditions as ancient (prior to 1500), 85 cases as modern (1500-1800) and 20 cases as recent (post 1800). In the ancient traditions as with Saint Dunstan (918-988) and Saint Francis we encounter the hagiographic difficulty, their levitations being mentioned by their later biographers but not their earliest ones. Some modern critics have taken the view that levitation^is purely a subjective feelingc experienced by ecstatic persons, many of whom have certainyl spoken of a sense of lightness and of being lifted up. But the case of St. Joseph Mary Desu (1603-63) is adequate by itself to prove the occurrence of levitation as an objective physical happening. Very slow of wit, none the less while at the Conventual Monastery at Copertino in Southern Italy, he gained such a fame in the district for his goodwill, piety and holiness that he was examined by the Inquisition of Naples, but acquitted of the charge of deceiving the populace by false miracles. Subsequently the authorities, rendered even more suspicious by his levitations, transferred him successively to Assisi, Urbino, Fossombrone and Osima, but at each place he attracted a pilgrimage.

Joseph's levitations occurred during joyous raptures which could easily be triggered off as by music or the sight of a sacred image or beautiful leaf or twig. Sometimes they were simple suspensions in the air as happened in Rome before Pope Urban VIII, to which the Holy Father testified. At Copertino alone no less than 70 levitations are alleged. Some were comical rather than edifying. The wife of the High Admiral of Castile fainted when she and her husband saw Joseph fly a distance of 12 paces over their heads. Mary, Princess of Savoy, who had an affectionate reverance for Joseph deposed to several remarkable flights in her presence. The Lutheran Duke of Brunswick and his chaplain saw Joseph at Mass transported in the air about 5 paces from the altar while still in a kneeling posture and return in similar fashion. They became Catholics. Joseph's flights are exceptional among levitators. The majority of eye-witness accounts concerning other mystics, (and there are many relating to widely different times and places), affirm that the mystic while in ecstasy is suspended about six inches above the ground and at length makes a gentle landing. The levitating mystic may be preaching like Saint Alphonsus Liguori (I696-I787) and Saint Andrew Fournet (1752-1834), or praying like Sa:nt Teresa of Avila (1515-82) and the great theologian Francis Suarez (1548-1617). The evidence is not conclusive but strongly suggests that levitation occus only in ecstasy. In 24 cases out of the 155 listed by Leroy the face or figure of the levitating ecstatic have been said to give off or be bathed in a mysterious radiance. Sometimes it is said to emanate from a sacred image or crucifix, but in other cases there is no obvious source. Puzzling as this may be, it does not weaken the evidence for levitation which rests on non-irradiated cases like St. Joseph's.levitation (and perhaps radiance) is one mystic phenomenon requiring us to postulate either supernatural explanation or the existence of natural forces unknown to physics. On a naturalistic view such forces are possibly the same as those released in poltergeist outbreaks, but with a different 'style' of operation corresponding to a radically different psychological situation. If following Theresa Neumann we look for "mystical significance" i.e. symbolic meaning, it is not hard to find. Levitation may be an acted out or realized "symbol of ascension" to use a phrase of Mircea Eliade who wrote a book on such symbolism. Religious literature from the Bible through to revivalist hymns is replete with metaphors for elevation of the soul towards the divine.

We are at a loss to suggest any reason psychologically or otherwise for the more "flighty" type of levitations experienced by St. Joseph of Copertino. It is true that he was not intellectual -- indeed some regarded him as almost simpleminded — and easily put into raptures by the sight of leaves or flowers, or by participating in the Mass. But St. Philip Neri (1515-1595) whose levitations, though less dramatic than Joseph's were however very dramatic, was a man of learning and refined intellect. Similar levitations are alleged of two other saints.

Radiance.

Returning to the subject of radiance it is curious that radiances, aureoles, or haloes, have rarely been reported except in conjunction with levitation. An exception seems to be reports by members of congregations sometimes of Protestant denominations of seeing a glow or glory around or above the head of the preacher, particularly at times when the latter seems to be highly inspired or moving. Whether this type of observation of which we have ourselves received reports, is allied closely or at all with the perception of auras (discussed elsewhere, see our review Vision and Perception, Auras and Illusions)we cannot say.

Elongation of the body.

Before returning to a discussion of powers exemplified in our own time by Padre Pio and Natuzza Svolo, and which set up a parallel between religious phenomena and some of those encountered in secular psychical research, we wish to mention briefly one bizarre kind of occurrence.

Allegations of distorion or elongation of the mystic's person would seem a priori to be too grotesque for pious hagiographers to insert them into the record as conventional indications of sanctity. But there are no recent instances. Also, even if the veracity of the witnesses is accepted,there is in some cases a doubt as to whether the more understandable and better authenticated phenomenon of levitation has not been mistaken for elongation. Thus the fellow nuns of Sister Veronica Caparelli (1537-1620) measured her height with a yard stick and found that during her prolonged ecstasies she seemed to be some 10 inches taller than usual. But on one occasion Mother Plautilla Semboli put her hand under Veronica's robe and "found she was lifted up above the ground". Other cases are in principle susceptible to explanation as hallucinatory like the occasion (about 1700) when a single witness saw Sister Maria Constante Castreca "grow a considerable height from the ground". We may however be puzzled by the affidavit signed by 21 ecclesiastics and notables to the effect that both arms of Blessed Stefana Quinzani (1457-1530) appeared to their view to be stretched some inches during her Friday ecstasies. There was muscular tensions, swelling of the veins, and blackening of the hands. But a careful reading suggests that the elongation may well have been within the limits of natural stretching possible in some individuals. This explanation (as well as standing on tip-toe) has been suggested for the vertical elongation cf Daniel Home observed at seances. Dr. Imbert- Gourbeyre described some remarkable distensions, contractions and distortions exhibited by Marie-Julie Jahenny in 1880. Though he was a Professor of Medicine and believed the contortions to be inexplicable by natural means we are entitled to reserve our opinion, particularly in view of the fact that the stigmatic had previously announced that her body would be compressed and her limbs shortened in expiration of the sins of mankind. Reading of hearts

This charming phrase is used in the religious sphere in reference to the ability of many saintly persons, such as the Cure' of Ars, to access knowledge without the use of any normal means. Thus the Cure' (Saint Jean Vianney) would on occasions greet those who came to be confessed by him by telling them the very problems that concerned them, and intimate details of the lives of themselves and their families. As the majority of the confessants had come from afar and were total strangers, this ability of the Cure naturally was very impressive. Speculation as to the origin of this knowledge was not carried very far, i.e. it was accepted as an indication that the Cure was the recipient of the divine grace. Alternatively it was hazarded that the Cure', again by the grace of God, was in touch with the spirits of the dead. This interpretation was encouraged by the fact that the good man often told the confessants the spiritual state of their dead relatives in purgatory. By a strange irony this bears a great resemblance to one interpretation of the powers of persons that we would now regard as psychic "sensitives when encountered outside of an established church setting. The irony does not result from there being anything intrinsically unreasonable in the idea that paranormally acquired information comes from the dead, but from the fact that the Catholic Church rigorously anathematized and any attempt to consult the dead as energetically as did King Saul of old. Even persons as responsible as Father Thurston S.J. were forbidden to attend seances. When looked at in the light of psychical research the "reading of hearts" as exhibited by St. John Vianney and others does not seem so very different from the powers manifested by "psychic sensitives". In the parapsychological field there are, of course, several theories as to how these powers operate. On one view they are an amalgam of the three faculties of telepathy, clairvoyance, and (possibly) precognition. As it is not always easy to differentiate between these three abilities, the blanket term GESP (general ) is sometimes used. Others, as we have said, regard the knowledge as obtained from the spirits of the dead. Yet others again regard it as derived from some kind of universal mind or consciousness in which all facts reside.

Padre Pio's gift of knowing things that by normal means he shouldn't is attested to by numerous witnesses. The same is said of Natuzza Evolo (see Appendix I) who also is good at "psychic diagnosis", i.e. medical diagnosis performed by intuition. This phenomenon is also known among some psychic sensitives outside the Catholic Church and is interpreted either as a form of ESP, or knowledge from some kind ©f universal mind or derived from the spirits of the dead. Signora Evolo ascribes the information used in her medical diagnoses as furnished by guardian angels and spirits of the dead. Her interpretations are entirely within the framework ©f the thinking of the Roman Catholic Church of which she is a devoted and devout member. As she is a married lady with five children and a husband she is not a nun. Had she been male and celibate she would doubtless have become a priest and a famous confessor. As it is,she is sought out for council and advice on spiritual and medical problems by large numbers of people daily. Before leaving the question of paranormal knowledge we should mention that the earlier stigmatic, the Venerable Catherine Emmerich in her Life of The Blessed Virgin Mary displayed a remarkable knowledge of ancient place names in the Holy Land. In the opinion of Father these facts were so totally obscure as to be out of reach of the scholars of her own time and a fortiori herself, and a paranormal source for the information has to be postulated.

Bilocation. is a term used only by students of Roman Catholic mysticism and relates to phenomena that to some degree resemble those which in psychical research are called apparitions, though they seem also to partake of the nature of what is called "travelling clairvoyance" or "astral projection". In psychical research it is recognized that many apparitions are of a relatively uninteresting kind, having only the status of hallucinations occasioned by some kind of brain malfunction, similarly visionary experiences which are widespread, especially in the religious field fall into yet another category. As regards apparitions proper, parapsychologists would, broadly speaking, accept G.N.M. Tyrell's grouping into four main classes. (See Apparitions, Collier Books, 196°» and earlier editions). Two of these classes do not concern us here; post-mortem appearances some time (days, weeks, months, or years) after the death of a person, and the "" which are sometimes alleged to haunt certain places. The remaining classes of apparition are however important and relevant to discussion of bilocation. The first is the extremely well-known one of crisis-apparitions; a recognized apparition is seen, heard, or felt at a time when the person represented by the apparition is undergoing some crisis — death, illness, accident, or some stressful situation. So far from being an extremely rare occurrence, the crisis—apparition is a relatively common phenomenon. A very large number of such happenings go unrecorded, but also many written statements from serious witnesses are available, so that a great deal can be said about the characteristics of such apparitions. Great variability, is of course, encountered. Some apparitions are fleeting and "lifeless", but other simulate real solid living people of normal appearance and behaviour to an amazing degree. The apparition totally fits into the background and relates properly to its surroundings, and may move and speak. These "perfect" apparitions constitute only a small minority of crisis figures but there are sufficient accounts available to command respect. An interesting feature of crisis apparitions is that in a quite surprising number of instances the apparition is seen by more than one of the persons present. Tyrrell as long ago as 19^2 had gathered together as many as 13© instances of collectively perceived apparitions. The occurrence of very realistic collectively perceived apparitions hag, in the opinion of the present authors to be accepted as an empirical fact irrespective of theories as to their mechanism.

The other class of apparitions recognized in psychical research is that which Tyrrell calls "experimental cases" An experimental case is one in which a person deliberately tries to make his apparition visible to a selected percipient. In recent years several writers have claimed the ability to "astrally travel" and thus to "visit" places at a distance and inspect them and "return" with information concerning objects and people at these locations. Others, such as Mrs. Eileen Garrett, a psychic sensitive with the capacity for analytic study of the whole field, as well as the ability of literary expression, have described their experiences of a parallel kind as "travelling clairvoyance". "Astral projection" and "travelling clairvoyance", whether or not distinct from one another, do not necessarily entail the apparition of the traveller being visible to persons who may be present at the "site" which is visited. However a diligent search would doubtless furnish some cases of this latter kind. Tyrell's collection certainly appears to comprise cases where the persons who attempt to "project" themselves are seen at the desired terminus.

We do not have any account by Padre Pio of his subjective experiences on the occasions when his apparition was seen and heard at distant-places, but numerous accounts are available from the percipients. The striking feature is the "perfection" of his apparition. It is this that has led to the use of the term bilocation presumably because commentators such as Revd. Charles M. Carty (Padre Pio, The Stigmatist. Tan Books, Inc, Roekford, P.O. Box 424. Illinois, 1971) have interpreted the happening as an actual teleportation or as a physical duplication of the animate body of the Padre, and also related the phenomenon to that of levitation, the latter being considered as a kind of premier pas en route to teleportation, which latter is regarded as more in the nature of an actual flight. In fact the question is rather difficult in respect of Padre Pio because there are a number of narratives available which could be inferred to imply either bodily teleportation or "invisible passage" as claimed for Jesus of Nazareth according to some interpretations of Saint Luke's Gospel (chapter 4, verses 29 and 30); "At these words the whole congregation were infuriated. They leapt up, threw him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which it was built, meaning to hurl him over the edge. But he walked straight through them all, and went away". Invisibility is claimed by a small number of saints such as Francis of Paola (1436-1507) and Vincent Ferre* (1350-1419). Similarly teleportation of the body has rarely been claimed. Even then it has been confused with flight, e.g. Saint Peter of Alcantara (also famed for "flighty" levitations, like Joseph of Copertino and Philip Neri). Prior to Padre Pio and Natuzza Evola in the present century, bilocation has rarely been asserted even of the most holy; almost the only alleged instances have been those of Saint Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) and Saint Alphonsus Liguori (I696-I787) the founder of the Redemp torists, who on 24 September 1772*, while in Naples was said to havebeen seen at the funeral of Pope Clement XIV in Rome. It is said that for many hours he was in a coma, but on awakening announced a fact, not known in Naples, that the Pope was dead and that he had been present at that event. £We forget whether it was one of these saints or some other whom Pope Pius XII named as the patron saint of television).

Testimonies of Padre Pio's are numerous and go back to 1917 when he is supposed to have appeared to General Cadorno when the latter was in a suicidal state after the devastating Italian defeat at the battle of Caporetto. In a typical case the person concerned, who is in some kind of anxious state suddenly sees a monk, whom they may recognise as Padre Pio. The apparition appears perfectly solid and real and it may speak, perhaps giving a comforting message. Sometimes the experience includes a fragrance like that of Pio's stigmata. Usually the appearance and the words spoken are relevant to the situation. Sometimes the apparition consists of words only in Padre Pio's voice.

Although Padre Pio's bilocations are almost unique, similar phenomena have been reported almost contemporaneously of another stigmatist in southern Italy, namely Signora Evolo whom we have mentioned already. Born and bred at Paravati near Catanzero in the "toe" of Italy, Natuzza Evolo was extremely devout from an early age. She was only ten years old when she sweated blood from forehead, shoulders, and eyes, and shortly after developed stigmata on right shoulder, left side, and wrists and feet. Like many stigmatists she goes into trances* also the stigmata exhibit the anniversary effect and are most pronounced in Lent and at Easter. There are very many testimonies to her bilocations, numerous witnesses having attested to her presence in their homes at time when there is documented evidence that she was in her house at Paravati. The realism of her apparition if often reinforced by the scent of roses. It is claimed that objective physical traces are left, such as bloodstains; also, it is said, she has moved physical objects during her visits. Often it is said that Natuzza remains invisible during her visits whose reality is then inferred in other ways. This kind of bilocation therefore tends to resemble "travelling clairvoyance". Not being herself a cleric and for that reason, unlike Padre Pio, escaping an ecclesiastical ban on describing her phenomena as looked at from her own point of view, Signora Evolo, at the instance of Professor Marinelli of the University of Calabria, has recorded her sensations when bilocating. "The bilocations never happen by my spontaneous will. One or more spirits of the dead, or one or more angels, present themselves to me and accompany me to the places where my presence is necessary. Here I can see the place where I am so that I can describe it and I can speak and be heard by the people present. I can open and close doorse move objects and produce actions. My vision is not a distant one, like watching television, or a film, but I am plunged into the surroundings visited by me. I remain on the spot for only the time necessary to fulfill my mission, which varies from a few seconds to a few minutes, and then I return to ray normal state. I am aware that my physical body is at my home in Paravati." Further commentary by Natuzza will be found in Scott Rogo's article which constitutes Appendix I.

Haemography. Natuzza Evolo exhibits one of the strangest phenomena encountered among stigmatists. At times her stigmata blood flows freely; when deposited on a cloth such as a handkerchief it may flow in such a way as to form words, or outline sketches. Thus, according to the testimony of Signo Giovanni de Chiara, a schoolmaster, "After she gave me back the handkerchief, I opened it and saw some bloodstains. I put it on the table and we all waited for the formation of the design. Slowly the blood started to move to one side of the handkerchief and vertically spelled out the name St. Valeriano Martire. The bloodstain that was left started then to move as well and formed the figure of a saint whom we assumed to be St. Valeriano. When we read his name Natuzza exclaimed "Who is this saint? Does he exist?" When I gave the handkerchief to its owner, I found out that he was devoted to that saint". (In paraenthesis we might note that Saint Valeriano, though genuinely a martyr, is indeed relatively obscure. His remains are buried in the catacomb of Saint Praetextus at Rome. He is supposed, on no good evidence, or any kind of evidence, to have been the husband of Saint Cecilia). The strangeness of this kind of happening is often emphasized by commentators by stressing that Natuzza is illiterate and cannot spell the words used. The point that is being made would seem to be that the haemography is beyond her mental abilities even if she herself were doing it by consciously or unconsciously regulated P.K. However this does not effectively rule out psycho-kinesis. In the first place it is easy to exaggerate the "illiteracy" of people in humble walks of life. They are often very intelligent, with quick , lively minds, »nd first-class memories, and often have far more knowledge of even a quite academic kind than their diffidence (often totally genuine and sincere) would lead them to claim. Further we cannot a priori limit the knowledge to which psychic persons may have access. In addition, there is a considerable body of poltergeist cases, which although they do not indicate the operation of diabolical influences, equally convey no intimations of the presence of the divine; these involve writing in one sense or other. Things have been reported quite as remarkable as Natuzza's blood forming itself into letters and words. Thus in the Dagg case, in Canada in 1889, a pencil was seen to write of itself, forming intelligible words and sentences. One of the most recent cases in which pencils wrote on the wall without human aid, is that of Matthew Manning at Cambridge, England, in the 1960's. Comparison with parapsychological phenomena.

We have underlined the parallels between some of the phenomena of mysticism and those encountered in the secular pursuit of psychical research. Thus it is rational enough for many serious scholars to suggest that those saints with remarkable powers are of the same ilk as "great " encountered in contexts that are not specifically religious. Once this postulate is made, there are few barriers to accepting the hypothesis that the great founders of religions, Jesus, Mohammed, and the Buddha, have been eminent "psychics", a claim that has been made often in the present eentury. This is due to the rise of psychic research itself, the development of comparative religion, and the realization in the West that morality and the characteristics of monothefetical religion are not reserved exclusively to the offshoots of Judaism but, in different language, constitute the core of Hindu, Brahmanism, , Sufisra, the religion of the Parsis and many others. We do not make this claim here, but note it as a point of view deserving of serious respect.

Other religions,

Islam has its saints and its miracles. It is said that some Islamic mystics develop stigmata that imitate the wounds of the Prophet Mohammed. Many marvels are narrated of the Buddha and of his present-day followers. Similarly for Hindu Brahmanic religion and its many branches.

In tke Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship, 3880, San Rafael Ave, Los Angeles, California, 90065, ed. 1969) the yogi Pararaahansa Yogonanda (I893-I952) mentions many phenomena strongly reminiscent of the ones described in the foregoing pages. Thus the spiritual teacher Lahiri Mahasays appears and speaks as if through bilocation to Yogananda's mother while he is in Benares and she is in Gorakpur some hundreds of miles away. On another occasion this master, who was said to be averse to having his picture taken, was photographed with a group of disciples, but when developed the print showed all the subjects except Lahiri himself. Another mystic and teacher, Swami Pranabanda, seemed, like Padre Pio, to know all of Yogananda*s thoughts and problems. The yogi Gandha Baba created the sensation of delicate floral perfumes to order and was reputed, somewhat as.was claimed for Saint Andrew Fournet to be able to any kind of fruit or food to himself as required, to feed the orphans whose pastor and guardian he was. Other parellels are levitation and the austere regimens of many of these masters. As in the Roman Catholic sphere some are inedics, such as the lady yogi, Giri Bala. Also almost without exception the masters graduate to their spiritual eminence by years of practice in meditation often commencing in childhood and maintained for many hours a day. The equivalents of ecstasies and raptures take place? the adepts experience visions and apparent communion with the supreme spiritual power in the Universe. A final parallel is incorruption of the body, which was claimed for Yogananda himself by his followers after his death on 7 March 1952 in Los Angeles, California, where he had founded a retreat and teaching centre. The director of the Mortuary at Forest Lawn Memorial Park certified that on the 27th of March "Our astonishment increased as day followed day without there being any visible change in the body under observation ... the ease of is unique in our experience".

It would seem prima facie that the parallels between western and eastern mysticism are considerable. Of course it would be unprofessional on our part to accept the Indian phenomena as being as well attested as those of Europe. It is possible that adequate documentation does exist, but even if it does, it may be difficult to access. Thus acceptance of eastern phenomena has to be at best provisional. However if we are prepared to proceed heuristically such evidence as we have tends to show that broadly speaking similar regimens, meditation and austerity — prayer and fasting — can produce similar effects — endowment with paranormal powers. If this is true it seems to be independent of the particular religious content. This finding, if valid, should encourage us in religious toleration as, to their credit, is stressed by the yogis and swamis. However a religious orientation and genuine desire for self-abnegation is also stressed, even if the religion can be of a very generalized and non-dogmatic kind. Many legends and anecdotes are directed to establishing that it is not enough to be a mere sadhu, i.e. one who hopes for merit through ascetism alone. Thus in the Vedic epic Ramayana, the demons Ravana and Mahishasura each "coerce" the gods into giving them siddhis (miraculous powers) by the long practice of austerities. The gods reluctantly agree, knowing that they will have to find some way of outsmarting these villains, which in the end they do. Legend also says that to attain the highest levels of spiritual mastery one must avoid the sin of pride, even in its subtlest forms such as certain kinds of desiring to do good. (This ought to be appreciated by Anglicans and Episcopalians if they know their Thirtynine Articles of _„ Religion, especially Articles XIII and XIV.) Thus a story in the Ramayana concerns a king VisttoSnitra who was converted to the spiritual life by the saint Vasishta. After thousands of years of meditation and austerity Brahma, the king of the gods, appeared before him and conferred the title of Rishi. Vishwamitra ves still sufficient of a snob to say "Of what rank?" and is disconcerted when Brahma says "Raja Rishi, kingly sage". Viswamitra was incensed, he wished to be a Brahma Rishi or "illumined sage of the highest class", and la- to about him to prove through exercise of his siddhis that he had attained the summit of aigehood or saintliness. After many attempts he realized that by motivation of pride he had forfeited his spiritual merit. After a thousand years of further fasting and meditation he became truly self forgetful and rose to the rank of Brahma Rishi.

As a parable the story of Viswamitre shows that despite what may be superficial differences between eastern and western mysticism, they each involve a philosophy which stresses selflessness. Similarly attainment to certain kinds of sainthood involves mystical prayer and it would seem some degree of asceticism. One difference emerges from the claims of some oriental writers such as Yogananda. This is the insistence on a particular physical training as distinct from the practice of austerities, i.e. yoga. Physical yoga apart from mental aspects would seem to embrace a group of muscular and breathing exercises. Yogis appear to disagree among themselves as to the theory and practice. In reaching any decision as to the relative importance of the diverse factors that enter into the development of the siddhis. a great deal of comparative study would be necessary. This would be a kind of epidemiology of sainthood. This would seem, a priori to be an unpromising subject for investigation. For instance, there seems to be a consistent attitude among yogis, swamis, rishis, with whom we have had personal contact (or have known those who have known them) that the siddhis are incidental to spirituality and that the true Brahma rishis if asked to demonstrate their powers will be "above that sort of thing". As those who respect the spiritual and the privacy of the spirit, we can sympathize with these adepts. At the same time, as investigators, we can feel some degree of irritati©ni

Envoi.

We have led the reader through what may seem to have been a maze of curiously entwined facts. We have tried, using traditional rules for the evaluation of evidence and testimony, and principles of inductive logic, to separate fact from fiction, and also to derive some conclusions. In our opinion, it is clear that some of the phenomena of mysticism can be successfully assimilated to known physiology and psychology and therefore, in high probability, can be regarded as "normal". Others, despite some differences of "style" have a considerable resemblance to those occurring in parapsychology, where the persons concerned though not in any positive sense "irreligious" do not come under the umbrella of any one specific religion. It is possible therefore that all mystical phenomena, old and new, eastern or western, should be subsumed under a single heading. Whether this should just be called the "paranormal" is not at all obvious. For even to do this ascribes remarkable powers to the human psyche. Some of the phenomena of psychical research suggest that the individual psyche either has immense powers of its own, or can draw on a "universal mind" both for knowledge and power. Alternatively we could accept the Brahmanic point of view that "atman" the core of the individual human psyche, is identical with Brahman the "soul", motive force and being of the Universe.

For most of us it is just too late to emulate the saints, yogis and fishis when we consider the tender years at which so many of them commenced their devotions. Perhaps however we can be comforted by the notion that heroic virtue is not within the individual compass of the vast majority of human beings. When one considers the early onset of the proclivity to suffering and austerity exhibited by so many religious east and west, one is led to postulate an inborn or congenital factor in devotion of that intense kind. Perhaps some are predestined to be saints! Leaving that possibility aside, we can still quote one of the Western world's most famous gurus, Saint Thomas Aquinas, to the effect that "Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it". Each person, according to the "Angelic Doctor" is unique; some are better or worse disposed for the perfection of virtue by reason of temperament. He, and also Saint Teresa of Avila, indicated a correlation between personality and the type of charism bestowed by the Holy Spirit upon the religious person. Thus the choleric or melancholic personalities are more receptive to eostasy, raptures, visions, and the hearing of voices, while the sanguine personality is more receptive to feelings, "interior touches" and "caresses" It was also claimed that women were more prone to spirituality then men. (This is probably not a culture-free findingl).

We have tried conscientiously to use reason as our guide. As G.K, Chesterton's character, Father Brown, remarks in the story The Blue Cross, "You shouldn't attack reason, it's bad ". Thus where possible we have to assimilate phenomena to the "normal", or, failing that, to the "paranormal" We say once again that aiy conclusions are provisional only. Without being prepared to grovel in the face of mystery, we can yet do well to quote Miguel de Montaigne's essay On Measuring Truth and Error. The good Mayor of Bordeaux, writing in the sixteenth century, said, "We must bring more reverence and a greater recognition of our ignorance and weaknesses to our judgement of nature's infinite power. How many improbable things there are, vouched for by trustworthy people, about which we should at least preserve an open mind, even if they do not convince usl For us to condemn them as impossible is rashly and presumptuously to pretend to a knowledge of the bounds of possibility".

Appendices.

I. "Natuzza Evolo Works Miracles". D. Scott Rogo, Fate Magazine.

II. "The Cure of Ars" A.R.G. Owen, Man, Myth and .

III. "Can Prayer or Meditation Invoke Benefits of Psi?" Ry Redd. Journal of Religion and Psychical Research. 10, 1-12. Jan. 1987. i | I I | i i » ft i I It 1

NATUZZA EVOLO WORKS MIRACLES Science cannot explain the powers of this Italian housewife who can appear in two places at once, diagnose illnesses and communicate with the dead.

By D. Scott Rogo voluminous mail, dictating responses to her friends and neighbors who read the letters to her and transcribe her ARAVATI is a small town in the answers. PCalabrian district of Italy. The Natuzza, a devout Catholic, believes place would be little known if not for her powers are gifts from God; guardi• the fact that a modern miracle worker an angels and spirits of the dead com• lives there. municate with her and provide her Her name is Natuzza Evolo and the with the information used in her miracles attributed to her intervention psychic medical diagnoses. Natuzza include her ability to see and talk with has been in contact with these spirits spirits of the dead, produce the stigma• since she was a young girl. Her two ta, appear in two places at one time most astounding phenomena are her The stigmatic wounds appearing on Natuzza Evolo's hands seem to form the Greek and diagnose the ills of persons who haemographs and her bilocations. letters for alpha and omega, symbolizing Christ, the beginning and end of all things. come to her (for which she never ac• Haemography is a phenomenon in cepts fees). Although Natuzza shies which blood, wiped from her stigmatic trances, in which she relives the shouts of pain. At about 10 o'clock, or may• from publicity, she is well known in It• wounds, patterns itself into words or be earlier, she started to shake and got up Passion. as if she had been hit violently. The phe• aly. For the past several years Prof. symbols. Ever since she was an adoles• One eyewitness report to Natuzza's nomenon recalled to the memory the whip• Valerio Marinelli of the University of cent Natuzza has borne the wounds of stigmata and visions comes from Dr. ping of Jesus. Calabria Engineering Department has the stigmata. At first she "sweated" Mario Cortese, a surgeon from Catan• been documenting her miracles. blood from her forehead, shoulders, zaro, who studied her stigmata several Next she started to reenact the Natuzza was born in 1924 in eyes and other parts of her body. But years ago and whose account appears Passion. Paravati in the province of Catanzaro. when she was 10 the full stigmata ap• in Professor Marinelli's booklet on the She still lives there today with her hus• peared. Wounds opened on her right case, A Study of the Bilocative Phe• I was particularly impressed by the diffi• culty of Natuzza's breathing, especially band and their five children. For the shoulder, wrists and feet and near her nomena of Natuzza Evolo: heart—the same places where accord• from midday until 2:30 P.M., the period last 35 years her home has been open that corresponds with the [time of the] Cru• to whoever wishes to visit her; some• ing to tradition Jesus was wounded I arrived at Paravati al about 9:30 A.M. cifixion of Jesus. The exhaling lasted a long times she receives as many as 50 to during the Crucifixion. The wounds and found Natuzza on her bed, in a clear time as if she had difficulty in expelling ox• 100 persons a day. In recent years, appear on Natuzza's body in a partial• state of agitation and suffering. On her ygen from her lungs. Her inhalation was ly healed condition but sometimes they forehead and head there were evident nearly normal. Even I could not imitate however, she has confined her "open wedge-shaped wounds, with the point that way of breathing, which must have house" to Monday through Thursday. bleed. They usually open fully during turned inwards, and bleeding. They looked been impossible for Natuzza to do as she On Friday she loses her powers, so she Lent and bleed most during Easter like Jesus' crown of thorns. Natuzza alter• suffers from a mitral-valve cardiopathy. Re• devotes the weekend to answering her Week. They often appear during her nated periods of silence full of pain and flecting about that unusual breathing, I re- 40 41 it I i i it i t i tv t 1 I 111

NATUZZA EVOLO WORKS MIRACLES 43 42 FATE Natuzza has even been known to leave of her bed. She had not been bleeding. alizcd that it must have been [like] the objective traces of her visitations at the Because she knew that Natuzza had breathing of those who had been crucified, dying by asphyxia because they were unable sites of her bilocations. She has left the power to leave bloodstains, she to exchange the air in their lungs. As a mat• traces of blood, moved physical objects phoned her husband who was at Vibo ter of fact, because of the traction caused during her visits and even transported Valentia in Calabria and said simply, by the weight of the body on the nailed physical objects. "Go to Natuzza, at Paravati, and ask arms, they had great difficulty in arching their diaphragms to expel the air in their These phenomena suggest that her her to narrate something to you." lungs. Every mouthful of air was won with bilocations are in some sense real, that When Leonardo arrived at Paravati, great pain as they had to push on their some aspect of Natuzza's self physical• Natuzza met him at the door. "I knew nailed feet to lift their bodies to expel the ly visits the area of her bilocation. air. At about 2:30 P.M. Natuzza relaxed you would come," she remarked. "I and remained in an abandoned state for a Marinelli has collected no fewer than have been waiting since this morning. few minutes. Only then did she turn toward 52 accounts of these phenomena. Some Last night I visited your wife in Sicily me and the other people in the room to say are miraculous indeed. and left some bloodstains on the bed hello, as if she had seen us for the first time. For instance, Signora Jole Gualtieri, and some fingerprints with which I a college professor, and her husband touched the sheet." As soon as Roma• It is at this point that Natuzza pro• Blood wiped from stigmatic wounds pat• Leonardo Romano, an engineer, told no got home he telephoned his wife duces her haemographs. Dozens of terns itself into words or symbols. Mes• Marinelli the following story about who was amazed to find the bloody people have witnessed their production. sage on this dress proclaims in French, I their experience with Natuzza: fingerprints, a detail she had missed Giovanna de Chiara, a schoolteacher am the Immaculate Conception. In August 1975 Professor Gualtieri before that. Natuzza told Gualtieri who has known Natuzza for several was in Sicily, at Castellamare del Gol- that she had visited her with a de• years, reports: formations although it appears certain fo in the district of Trapani. When she ceased person whom Gualtieri identi• woke up one morning, she found blood• fied as her father. It was Hoiy Monday three years ago. that some intelligent power directs the Natuzza was at Catanzaro at my house, blood and guides it as it patterns into stains on the sheet and on the cushion Another case reported to Marinelli and besides her and me, there were my sis• words and figures. But what power? concerns Vincenzo Lacquaniti, an ac• ters Nella and Rosetta. All of a sudden we quaintance of Natuzza's from noticed that the wound on Natuzza's wrist Perhaps Natuzza possesses strong psy- was bleeding; so we asked her to produce a chokinetic powers which she uncon• Rosarno, a city some 10 miles from her haemograph for a young man who I knew sciously uses to direct the blood. But home. One night in 1955 he was waked wanted an example. Natuzza held a white this theory cannot account for those from sleep by loud knockings on the handkerchief that I had given her on her cases in which the blood spells out balcony of his home. Thinking a bur• wrist for about 10-15 minutes. It had the glar had broken in, he fetched his gun, name of the owner written on it. After that words. Natuzza is illiterate and the she gave me back the handkerchief. I haemograph often molds itself into for• roused his wife and climbed upstairs to opened it and saw some bloodstains. I put it eign words and phrases she cannot un• see who was making the ruckus. His on the table and we all waited for the for• derstand, much less write. It seems the wife, now fully awake, also heard the mation of the design. Slowly the blood knockings. She decided to flee to an• started to move to one side of the handker• miracle must be produced by some in• chief and vertically spell out the name S. telligence outside Natuzza's own mind. other room on the ground floor of the Valcriano Martire. The bloodstain that was * * » house but as she left the bedroom she left started then to move as well and formed was confronted by three apparitions. LTHOUGH these haemographs the figure of a saint whom we assumed to One was the form of Natuzza, who be S. Valcriano. When we read his name represent a first-class mystery, smiled at her, while the others, stand• Natuzza exclaimed. "Who is this saint? ANatuzza probably is best known for ing on either side of her, were the Does he exist?" When I gave the handker• her bilocations. Hundreds of persons chief to the owner. I found out that he was figures of her deceased father and un• have seen her or felt her presence in devoted to that saint. Haemographs. involving the paranormal cle. The figures vanished and Lac• their homes or on the street at times production of religious messages in blood quaniti returned from his fruitless when there is documented evidence from the stigmata, are among Natuzza Oddly enough, even Natuzza has lit• Evolo's most amazing phenomena. search upstairs. tle idea of what produces these curious that she was at home in Paravati. ft . fc I I. I t I •:

NATUZZA EVOLO WORKS MIRACLES 45 44 FATE Even Professor Marinelli, who has HE GREAT saints and mystics of Some months later when the couple One such incident occurred one Au• so diligently investigated the Evolo the Catholic Church have always met with Natuzza they said nothing gust day in the late 1960's. Natuzza case, has witnessed one of her biloca• Tbeen reluctant to discuss the nature of about their . had gone to Catanzaro to visit her tion visits. The incident occurred while bilocation. The late Padre Pio of San Nonetheless Natuzza spontaneously mother who was ill and in a hospital. he was investigating the Giampa case. Giovanni Rotundo in Foggia, Ita• mentioned her visit and joked about First, however, she went to church and Marinelli had gone to Professor ly—perhaps the most famous bilocat• Lacquaniti's gun. "Who did you want then called on her friend Italia Giampa's house on April 13, 1979, and ing mystic of our time—positively re• to shoot that night? Birds?" she Giampa. She placed her foulard, with while talking with him, Mrs. Giampa fused to discuss it at all. But Marinelli quipped. which she had covered her head in suddenly became excited. She said she has been fortunate enough to procure church, on a chest of drawers in the An even wilder story is told by An• could smell roses in the room and from Natuzza a detailed report on the dining room. She then went to see her gela Laureani who has known Natuzza thought that Natuzza was present. inner sensations of bilocation. This ma• mother. for 30 years. Several other persons were there but terial, which Marinelli published along The incident took place toward the After her visit she had lunch at the none could smell the roses. Half an with his report on Natuzza's biloca• end of 1977. Laureani was in bed read• Giampa home. The Giampas were hour later the telephone rang. It was tions, contains some of the most fasci• ing a magazine article about the life of celebrating the confirmation of a Natuzza who was calling to tell Mrs. nating autobiographical notes available Padre Pio, the great Italian stigmatist. young friend. Mrs. Giampa and her Giampa that -she had just visited her on the nature of this phenomenon. She dozed off, only to be jolted awake husband Libero were present along and had sat in an empty chair in the "The bilocations never happen by when the magazine fell to the floor. To with Mrs. Giampa's three sisters. room. The chair she designated had in my spontaneous will," Natuzza ex• her astonishment she found one of her Natuzza left at four o'clock that after• fact been unoccupied during Marinel- plains. "One or more spirits of the eyes bandaged with cotton and gauze. noon. Shortly afterwards the Giampas li's visit. dead or one or more angels [or a com• Although she applied this dressing ev• decided to visit a friend in Bari and as This case is typical in one respect. bination of angels and spirits] present ery night for an ailing eye, she was they were about to leave their home, Although Natuzza often remains invis• themselves to me and accompany me positive she had not done it before doz• they noticed Natuzza's foulard still on ible while bilocating, she still can make to the places where my presence is nec• ing off. the chest. Apparently she had forgot• her presence known. This same phe• essary. Here I can see the place where ten it. Mrs. Giampa was sorry about Later, in the course of a conversa• nomenon occurs in the following case: I am so that I can describe it and I can tion with Natuzza, she alluded to the this because she thought Natuzza One day in 1972 Prof. Maria speak and be heard by the people incident in a careful way so as not to might need it. Mantelli, a college teacher in Catanza• present. I can open and close doors, reveal any concrete information about A few days later Mrs. Giampa re• ro, asked her husband to go to Parava• move objects and produce actions. My it. "Natuzza," she asked, "what hap• turned home. To her surprise Natuz• ti, fetch Natuzza and bring her back to vision is not a distant one, like watch• pened to me the other night?" za's foulard had disappeared from the Catanzaro for a medical examination. ing a film or the television, but I am Natuzza replied that she had bilo- chest of drawers although it had been The husband demurred, explaining plunged into the surroundings visited cated to her home with the woman's locked in the house when she and her that he didn't know if this was a good by me. I remain on the spot only for own deceased brother-in-law who had husband had left for Bari. idea, but promised that he would de• the time necessary to fulfill my mis• applied the bandage. "I sat on the Mrs. Giampa saw Natuzza in cide the next day. When he woke up sion, which varies from a few seconds armchair," she said, "and I saw your Paravati the next day. While she was the next morning, he found a blood• to a few minutes, and then I return to brother-in-law approach you and put a apologizing for the unaccountable loss stain in the shape of a heart on his my normal state. I am aware that my cloth on your forehead. I did not see, of the foulard, Natuzza interrupted cushion. Deeply impressed, he went to physical body is at my home in though, exactly what he did to you be• her and explained that she had bilocat- Paravati. When Natuzza arrived at the Paravati." cause he had his back to me. Then ed to the house and had taken it. Mantelli home, she—with no prompt• The phenomena occur during the your magazine fell onto the floor and "Mrs. Giampa, do not worry about the ing—mentioned the bloodstain which day when she is awake and at night you woke up." foulard," she said. "I came to get it. I she claimed she had left during a bilo• when she is asleep. Usually she will need it to go to church and so I came Cases in which Natuzza reportedly cation experience. It was her way of find herself in her new location and her to get it." She fetched the foulard has transported a physical object dur• expressing her thanks since she knew "angel" or a spirit will tell her where which Mrs. Giampa recognized as the ing bilocation are rare but some spec• that he would indeed come for her. she is and what her mission is to be. tacular incidents have been recorded. one that had been left in her house. 1 t I I i a fc... i i i i

46 FATE "The journey doesn't seem to last There certainly seems to be a large any time at all," she went on. "I in• body of evidence documenting Natuz• stantly find myself in some place, inde• za Evolo's role as a modern-day mira• pendently from the distance. When I cle worker. Of course one might argue go to a house, I find myself directly in that all the witnesses are lying, but this the room, or more often in a room ad• explanation is hard to take seriously. jacent to the one where I have to see Many of those who have witnessed the person [to whom she is bilocating]. Natuzza's miracles have been deeply Sometimes I have been able to convey affected and seem to be leading model material objects between the place vis• lives—with a new respect for charity ited in bilocation and my house where and humility—because of the renewed my physical body was. I don't know religious faith Natuzza has instilled in how this happens but it has happened." them. They have come forward to re• Neither do Natuzza's bilocations veal their most private experiences seem like conventional out-of-body ex• with Natuzza, out of gratitude to her, periences. She doesn't feel ill or tired and they seem sincerely .convinced of afterwards nor does she ever have the the existence of a spiritual world by sensation of journeying to the distant the miracles she has wrought. location or of traveling through a tun• Of course we have yet to learn the nel or void. She has never experienced whys and wherefores of Natuzza's the typical "floating above the body" gifts. Perhaps one day science will un• and claims never to have seen anything derstand them. Or perhaps the powers like an "astral cord" extending from possessed by this peasant woman are her double. beyond anything science can explain.

CHINAS BLOND BOMBSHELL liv Gardiner James N MARCH 1981 word came out nose were her tiny, thin lips. She was I via the Chinese People's Daily that wearing a small hat and leather boots a mummified body of a female with and was wrapped up in blankets and shoulder-length blond hair was recent• animal skins. Her flesh still has elas• ly uncovered by archaeologists in the ticity ." ancient forgotten city of Loulan in the Carbon-dating techniques verify Xinjiang Desert in northwest China. her antiquity; she lived 6471 years The city, buried for centuries by dev• ago. She was buried in a sand grave ly• astating desert sandstorms, is located ing in a supine position. The Pennies about 40 mites from the dry lake bed Daily commented. "If the 5000-year- of l.op Nur. the present-day atomic old mummies of Kgypt were acclaimed testing site. as the world's oldest, thou the l.oulan Wang I.uii. the archaeologist who woman should count as even older." found the mummy, told reporters: Chinese scientists attribute her "The shape other body was extremely miraculous preservation to the ex• beautiful and she was tall. She had treme dryness of the desert and the long blond hair that flowed to her sand grave. They view the discovery shoulders. On her comely face was a as very important in their continuing pair of big eyes: you could still count exploration of the lost civilization of her long eyelashes. Beneath her high the ancient city of Loulan. Un pere.de famille est ren- rttealasante jarsesprieres.

II rendl'usa^e des jamues OprieDieii d eclairer w aim ioiteux. ses ouaillas.

organized church. Vianney therefore had CURE OF ARS little schooling and attended secret Masses. Jean-Marie's sense of religious vocation, THE LIFE OF St Jean-Marie-Baptiste the desire to 'win many souls to God', Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, is crystallized about 1798 when he was sent ! aitts,Sei|neur. que nous soy of great interest from the viewpoints both of to work on his uncle's farm at Ecully, about Dien it honte jciordfr. i nuti* and psychical research. four miles south of Dardilly. Ecully sheltered • *ns toujourc awmes de k' Born in 1786, the second son of a small several priests including Abbe Charles fiiWejse !«ser.ours de votr? farmer in the village of Dardilly, near Lyons, Bellay who prepared Jean-Marie for his first Jcrainte tl it laiwur de voire t grict; el tmm nous bonorNis he proved exceptionally responsive to his Communion, administered secretly. In 1805, >ainUom.puhqnevousne mother's religious teaching. A sensitive and when religion was restored, his father let linifmoir«iehS*Merf de nervous child, he was also robust, lively and him return to Ecully to study at Abbe I cessez jamais de pnte'ger can vivacious but occupied his mind with Bellay's presbytery school. He found Latin uitt.faifsqiit'jark wcotirj it wue vous avei eUblisdans la religious topics while assisting in the fields. agonizingly difficult and only a 60-mile

Editions du Chalet of Ardeche saved him from despair. As an large bright eyes, radiant in a shrunken intending priest registered under the Arch• and wraithlike face, gave him the semblance bishop of Lyons (Napoleon's uncle), he was of a saint on earth, and it was not surprising exempt from military service, but in 1809 that broadsheets extolled him as if he were was called up in error. already enthroned in glory. Falling ill of a 'slow fever', he was sent His sermons were as famous as his on to rejoin his regiment. Exhausted he was confessional. He depicted the horror of picked up on the road by a military damnation; but it was not mere 'hell-fire' defaulter who conveyed him to Les Noes preaching or 'bible-punching'. Sponta• in the shelter of the Bois Noirs hills. neously he shed tears, as did his congre• The Mayor, a confirmed anti-Bonapartist, gation, at the plight of souls separated from advised him to stay in hiding. God and spoke with moving simplicity of In consequence of an amnesty he returned the joy of those who perpetually saw God to Ecully in 1811 and from 1812 to 1814 face to face. Bishops and dignitaries came he studied at seminaries in Verrieres and from all France to hear him, as well as Lyons. He failed the examinations (con• writing to him for advice on dealing with ducted in Latin) but was allowed to take moral and pastoral problems. them in French. He was ordained priest In later years the Cure was constantly (deacon) at the age of 29. exposed to the temptation to retreat from In 1818 Vianney was appointed to the Ars to a monastic and contemplative tiny parish of Ars, across the Saone about existence. He tried to leave the village 16 miles from Lyons. One small church of three times but always returned. At his primitive design and four large taverns last attempt, in 1852, he was apprehended ministered to the needs of the 230 inhabi• by his parishioners. He died in Ars after tants who tended to be indifferent to a brief illness, in 1859 at the age of 73. religion. But the Abbe could not reconcile himself to a single soul eluding Heaven. The Making of a Saint In his last years he reluctantly accepted the The Conversion of Ars ribbon of the Legion of Honour. By this By calling at mealtimes, though himself time 100,000 pilgrims, it is estimated, refusing refreshment, he came to know visited Ars annually. Consequently the first every family. He spoke to them as peasant papal Process for inquiry into Vianney's to peasant, but never failed gently to insist merits began as soon as 1862. He was on the claims of religion. Soon the villagers declared Venerable in 1872, Blessed in 1905 learned of his fasting and prayers for sinners and canonized as a Saint in 1925, on the late into the night and before dawn. In the basis of two cures effected at his tomb. pulpit he declared innkeepers to be the The Cure's remains were exhumed in source of sin and poverty, incapable of 1904 preparatory to his beatification. The salvation. As the church filled the taverns flesh was dried and darkened but intact emptied. The innkeepers went out of except for the face which, though recog• business, the last one being bought out nizable, had suffered damage. by the Cure. For many of the pilgrims Ars and its An able strategist, Vianney first con• Cure' had a mystic lustre, and many came verted the women, who prevailed on their in the hope of physical cure as well as menfolk to attend church and not work on spiritual healing. As in all pilgrimages a Sundays. In the confessional the little proportion of the suppliants were cured of Abbe ruthlessly withheld absolution until bodily ailments. Few of the accounts extant convinced that contrition was genuine and are sufficiently detailed medically for us sin renounced. The most prolonged of his to decide whether they were natural or struggles was against communal dancing, supernatural. Since such cures can and do rustic drunken revelries tending to promis• occur outside of a religious setting, we cuity. But by 1824 he had effectively won cannot affirm them to be patently super• his battles. natural. But, whatever the cause, Ars was His parishioners soon discovered his as productive of faith-cures as any of the remarkable talent as a confessor. He had a world's famous shrines. wonderful ability to penetrate their secret Vianney was a fine intuitive psychologist. thoughts, it seemed. His words were few His remarks, often humorous and always but always perfectly aimed. In time the gentle though firm, revealed a penetrat• faithful flocked to confession from Ars, ing simplicity. Some of the qualities of Dardilly, Ecully and Les Noes, and eventu• G. K. Chesterton's character Father Brown ally from all France. were inspired by the Cure. Numerous His was an incredibly exhausting regime. testimonies suggest that he had an insight He became so thin that he seemed but a superior to the normal, as if he was literally flame glowing through skin and bone. His capable of reading thoughts. In modern terms, we should describe him as a'sensitive' A visionary and mystic, the Cure of Ars was with a marked capacity for telepathy. From also a penetrating and intuitive psychologist; a crowd of pilgrims Vianney would pick in addition various testimonies suggest that he out a total stranger and tell him the problem was capable of reading thoughts Previous page that had brought him to Ars and intimate Portrait of the Cure: the scenes surrounding facts of his life. These stories are based on written testimonies with circumstantial % his picture illustrate events in his life, including | miracles that he is believed to have performed detail. It is possible that the Abbe' was also * Left Statue, in wood, of the Cure of Ars: clairvoyant and precognitive. | canonized in 1925, he is the patron saint of We are in no position to decide whether S parish priests he had these powers by nature or by God's 60

grace as a token of sanctity. Such abilities Cure from what appeared to be an ecstasy, suggests that some of the happenings, are not manifested by all saints. Modern 'his countenance radiant and his gaze fixed'. including the voice, were actual objective sensitives tell us that response to human When Mile Durie referred to the presence physical events. And there is no evidence mi need is a factor very conducive to the of 'our Lady', the Cure told her she was positively to support the sleep-walkingtheory. operation of paranormal powers, a sugges• not mistaken but must never speak of it The haunting of the Cure bears a strong tion supported by other evidence from again. It appears that Mile Durie was cured resemblance to poltergeist outbreaks, many psychical research. Also the Cure's aus- of her presumed cancer after a lapse of of which are objective phenomena. Many

lMg terities rivalled those of any oriental yogi, three and a half months. features common to poltergeist disturbances though whether paranormal powers can in suggest that a goodly proportion of them are fact be reinforced by asceticism is not yet Attacks of the Devil due to obscure natural causes and related certainly known. The Cure's life corresponded to saintly to emotional tension in the person on whom prototypes in a further respect. From 1824 they centre. We know that the Cure's heroic Ecstasies and Visions to 1858 he suffered sporadically what he virtue in his pastoral office was maintained Those who lead lives of spiritual intensity believed to be persecutions by the Devil. in the face of a longing for solitude and are often visionaries. The Cure would some- At night he heard noises as of rats gnawing contemplation, and it is arguable that the times pass into the state of calm and joyful or scratching, or of blows on the doors of internal struggle was externalized in the contemplation, known technically as 'ecstasy'. the presbytery, or of hammering or drum• drama of the Satanic persecution. In ecstasy numerous mystics have believed ming. Sometimes the Cure would hear the The mysterious happenings attendant themselves to be in direct spiritual union sound of footsteps and a coarse rough on the Abbe cannot be surely interpreted as with God. The Cure was most guarded voice mocking him as 'a potato eater' and either natural or supernatural by considering about his experiences, but phrases he let growling abuse and obscenities. A picture his life in isolation from the data of psychical slip suggest that at times he felt the close of the Annunciation was found smeared research on the one hand, or the phenomena presence of John the Baptist, the Blessed with filth. The Cure's bed was shaken and of the mystics on the other. As a person Virgin and St Philomena. as well as Christ pulled across the room while he lay on it. at first he repels as a reactionary puritan, himself. The testimony of contemporaries suggests but in the end the most agnostic of readers Some witnesses testify that they them• that on some occasions only the Cure heard is liable to be vanquished by Vianney's selves had visions in the Abbe's presence. the diabolical speech and noises, and it is strange and improbable charm. In 1840 a Mile Durie heard a gentle voice natural to suppose that sometimes they A. R. G. OWEN *• talking to the Cure. Entering the room she were only hallucinatory. The act of vandalism saw a lady of ordinary stature, in a robe of could, in theory at least, be attributed to FURTHER READING: The following biog• dazzling white bearing golden roses and the Abbe himself in a condition akin to raphies were all published by Burns and with a wreath of stars about her head. sleep-walking, as with Father John of Oates — Rene' Fourrey, The Cure D'Ars mi Addressing the lady as Mother, Mile Durie, Castille, of whom it was said that the Devil (1959); L. C. Sheppard, Portrait of a Parish who believed herself to have cancer, asked compelled him to use his own hands to Priest (1958); Francis Trochu, The Cure to be taken to Heaven. 'Later', said the lady deface pictures of the Blessed Virgin. But D'Ars (1936); see also Margaret Trouncer. who then vanished. Mile Durie aroused the there was also testimony from Ars which Miser of Souls (Hutchinson, 1959). I it i t I k I Li I 1 1 I I

VU ACADDli OF RELIGION AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

OFFICERS Journal of Religion and Psychical Research Dr. M-»ry Caraan Roee President Volume 10, Number 1 January, 1987 Dr. C. Alan Anderaon Vice-President Mr. Boyce Batey Executive-Secretary Can Prayer or Meditation Invoke Benefits of Psi? Mr. Prank C. Tribbe General Counsel and Treasurer Ry Redd

Board of Trustees The author develops a theory of the roles of synergy in spiritual Rev. Lawrence V. Althouae Paul Laabourne Hlgglns (1989 healing and psi phenomena among groups of persons who come together for Dr. C. Alan Anderson Kenneth T. Hurst (1988/ prayer and meditation. To support his hypothesis, he draws on data Mr. Boyce Batey Stanley Kzlppner (1987 from , Judaism, and Indian spirituality. He also provides Dr. L. Richard Bttsler Elisabeth E. McAdaaa (1987 Scriptural support for the hypothesis. Dr. Arthur S. Bergex Xarlls Osis (1967 Dr. Valter Houston Clark William V. Rsuscher (1988/ Mz. John R. Crowley Ka'ry Caraan Rosa (1987J Dr. C. Douglas Dsan Steven N. Rosen 119871 Introduction Rav. Elisabeth Fenske John Ressner (1989 1 Rev. Paul B. Fenske Frank C. Tribbe (1989 Rev. George V. Plsk Jaaes Ulneea (1989 ' Psi research and the history of religions converge to Dr. Bernard R. Grad Edgar Vlzt 11987! 1 support an affirmative answer to the question, "Can Prayer Dr. Ellerr B. Haakell Nancy Zlngrone (1988,1 or Meditation Invoke Benefits of Psi?" Reports of para• normal or miraculous experiences in the history of Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity from New Testament times to the The Journal of RslUlon and Psychical Research Is published quar• twentieth century consistently confirm a direct causal terly in January, April, July, and October of each year by the Academy connection between psychic phenomena, prayer and meditation. of Religion and Psychical Research; an academic affiliate of Spiritual Evidence from parapsychology ranges from Dr. Karlis Osis' Frontiers Fellowship with lta national headquarters located at 10819 successful enhancement of psi in group meditation experi• Winner Rd., Independence, Missouri 6W62. (ISSN 1731-21<»8) ments to results reported by other researchers in controlled group prayer healing experiments. Several investigators The Journal baa bean established as a vehicle and forua for dia• even see prayer itself as a form of ESP. logue and exchange of ideas asong Academy aeabers and others pertaining to the area in which religion and psychical research interface. It pub• lishes articles, research proposals, abstracts of research completed This essay will explore the psi-religion interface for and underway, book reviews, reports of conferences, nana, and corre• insights into the principles by means of which psi benefits spondence. Opinions expressed in the Journal are those of the authors are invoked through prayer and meditation. The key role and the publication of those opinions herein is not to be construed aa played by the principle of synergy in the invocation of psi indicative of approval or concurrence by tha Academy of Religion and benefits in group prayer-meditation and spiritual healing Psychical Research or its Board of Trustees. All righta are reserved. will be described. The synergy principle's potential as a Articles appearing in tha Journal may be reproduced or translated with bridge between psi and religion will be emphasized. the written permission of the Editor.

Send all material submitted for consideration for publication in tha Saintly Psi Journal to the Editor 1 Mary Carman Rosa, <*02 Gittlnga Ave., Baltimore, Hd. 21212. Once two brothers were on their way to Saint Antony, and when all their water was gone, one Send all books for review in tha Journal to the Editor at tha above died and the other was near to dying. Having no address. strength to go on, he lay on the ground and awaited death. Meanwhile Saint Antony, seated on Heabere of the Academy receive -the Journal aa a benefit of neaberahlp. a mountain, called the monks who happened to be Subscriptions to the Journal are available to libraries of religious with him and told them: 'Take a jar of water and and divinity schools,.seminaries, eollegas, and high schools for S8.00 run along the road to Egypt. There are two men per annum. Single back Issues of the Journal are available for $2.00- who are coming here; one of them is already dead, and the other too will die unless you hurry. This Copyrlght (5)1986 by the Academy of Sellglon and Paychlcal Research. I saw when I was at prayer.* Third-class poelege paid at tha Bloomfleld, CT. Poet Office.

1 I I I I t I 1 i. It * it i i i i i

Can Prayer or Meditation Invoke Benefits of Psi? The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research suggestions are given. (The "Sleeping Prophet", Edgar After a day's walk, the monks came to the spot Saint Antony Cayce, 1877-1945, is the best documented case of this.) An had seen clairvoyantly in prayer. They indeed found one man important but little known historical precedent for these dead — whom they buried -- and another nearly dead of charismatic activities as well as the giving of psychic thirst. They revived him with the water and brought him to "readings" can be found in christian and Jewish mystical Saint Antony. Western histories of the saints include many prayer practices which were widespread in twelfth-thirteenth stories of prayer and meditation being accompanied by century Europe. These amply documented experiences of psychic experiences. This one is somewhat unique in the direct were used as a means of guidance and manner in which the psi benefits — saving the dying monk's judgment on controversial religious and ethical questions. life — is much more central to the story than the clair• Part clairvoyant (remote sensing) and part charismatic, voyant psi experience itself. these methods of spiritual questioning were called "myster• ies of prayer" because they were based on a mysterious The pioneering psychologist William James records in repetition of holy names. After pronouncing in prayer or his classic Varieties of Religious Experience several cases prayerfully concentrating silently on these special words, of intensely sensitive and immensely spiritually devoted as described by one medieval observer, the mystic's "body individuals whose psi experiences in prayer and meditation sinks to the ground. The barrier in front of his soul were so frequent that they were virtually commonplace 2 falls, he himself steps into the centre and gazes into the occurrences. R.M. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness provides additional instances from the lives of saints and mystics in faraway." After a while the effect of the self-suggestion recedes. "Then when he becomes a little conscious of which extrasensory perception (ESP) often accompanied 5 spiritual disciplines such as prayer, meditation and yoga.3 himself, he tells them what he has seen." Hasidic tradi• Some of these saints and mystics have been reported as tion includes an entire collection of these "Responses from levitating while praying. Two well-documented Italian Heaven", as they were then called. They were revealed to a saints are classic examples: Saint Francis of Assisi and rabbi as answers to "dream questions" about the Bible and Saint Joseph of Copertino. Jewish law. They were put to him while he was in this meta- psychic, sleep-like state induced through prayer repetition of holy names. Legends abound in the Christian classic Little Flowers of Saint Francis. The famous thirteenth century founder of The asking of dream questions was an extremely wide• the Franciscan Order was said to have been seen spread magical practice for which scholars have hundreds of recipes. The German Christians who were the mystical fore• many times ... rapt in God and suspended above the runners of today's charismatic also engaged in these same earth, sometimes at the height of three feet above mystical prayer practices. Many of the latter, who see the ground, sometimes four, sometimes raised as psychic readings, and parapsychology as little high as the top of the beech trees and sometimes more than heresy, are often "slain in the Spirit", speak in exalted so high in the air and surrounded with so tongues and psychically experience "words of knowledge" and dazzling a glory, that Brother Leo [his secretary- . Ironically considered heretics like the Hebrew confessor and constant companion) could scarce Hasidim who lived among them, these medieval christian endure to look upon him.4 prayer mystics "attached the very greatest importance to such direct contact with the psychic world." The seventeenth century Franciscan, Saint Joseph of Copertino, an extreme ascetic, levitated while praying While mystical prayer practices invoking ESP are several times in the sight of many witnesses. Said to have prevalent in the West, spiritual saints of the East rely on clairvoyance, telepathic powers and the ability to see into the future, he even levitated in the presence of Pope Urban deep meditation to invoke similar psi benefits, often VIII. Saint Joseph's prayer levitations were so frequent Indian religious teachers or "gurus" use psychic phenomena and extraordinary that he lifted others up with him, could as tools to direct their students and disciples towards "fly" for a short distance and could stay aloft for a deeper spiritual experiences. The great Hindu guru, considerable period of time. Ramakrishna, for instance, while in the mystical meditative state known as "samadhi" saw individuals who were to become his most important disciples or devotees before meeting them Today's growing conservative christian charismatic and physically. Reports Ramakrishna, Pentecostal movement focuses on many ESP-like phenomena such as spontaneous prayer healings, clairvoyant "words of know• God reveals the nature of the devotees to me ledge" and prophecy. Also popular is clairvoyant counseling before they arrive. I saw chaitanya's party given in an altered state after prayerful hypnosis-type 3 2 Ox *V3 i i i I i. I I t | i I t t 1114 11

The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research Can Prayer or Meditation Invoke Benefits of Psi?

singing and dancing near the Panchavati, between Do intense religious practices such as mediation the banyan trees and the Bakus tree. I noticed and prayer loosen some of the limiting boundaries Balaram there ... [pointing to M., his main and made us more open, more able to reach out to disciple] and I saw him too.6 those around us?^

Another great Indian spiritual master, Ramana Maharshi Noting the obvious overlap between spiritual experience and (also called Sri Bhagavan), used his deep state of silent ESP, Dr. Osis adds that they are apparently far from meditation to initiate his disciples psychically. Des• identical. The distinguished parapsychology pioneer asks, cribing his psychic samadhi mode of communication as the "Does religious sensitivity also open up extrasensory "utmost eloquence," Sri Bhagavan said, "The Highest Form of sensitivity and vice versa?" The evidence appears to Grace is Silence. It is also the highest way of instruction support an affirmative answer to both these questions. or initiation."' This Hindu saint's initiation-teaching of his disciples during intense meditative silence "entered Yet in this overlap between religious and extrasensory into those who turned to Sri Bhagavan in their hearts experiences, the distinction between them appears to lie in without being able to go [to him] bodily."8 whether they are intentionally constructive or measurably beneficial in outcome. This suggests that if the spiritual While in meditation, I had a parallel personal experi• experience was without constructive intent or produces no ence, perhaps the most profound and beneficial of my life. clear benefits, then perhaps it should be labeled "reli• I was similarly and silently "instructed" by the great gious". It would simply be generic psi; that is, a higher Indian spiritual master, Sant (meaning "saint") Kirpal mental rather than spiritual phenomenon. If so, then, it Singh. At the time, I knew virtually nothing about him, would seem that perhaps the prayer or meditation had somehow except that one of his devoted disciples was meditating with directly invoked generic psi, for example, by inducing via auto-hypnosis an altered brain wave pattern conducive to me. One of several rather extraordinary things about my ESP. intensely real, life-changing vision of Sant Kirpal Singh was that he had been dead for ten years! However, if fulfilling a constructive purpose or Besides confirming for me with certainty that we accompanied by objective benefits, the psi may be the result actually do survive the death of our physical bodies, this of what Sri Bhagavan might call grace, or a experience has brought me great benefits. I soon freed as Saint Paul and Christian charismatics would say myself from the long-lasting grip of several vices and ("charismata" is Greek for spiritual gifts). Rather than drastically improved my diet. Most important, my clear yet being active causes, these practices may passively invoke wordless experience of love in this vision-apparition psi benefits by enhancing such grace factors as spontaneity, answered religious questions of supreme importance to me sensitivity and receptivity to ESP and spiritual forces operating on our behalf but otherwise unseen. In his while reassuring me of my genuine relation to the spiritual scholarly book, Dr. Richard Drummond points out that world. In a subsequent vision, I was further "instructed" spiritual gifts "came to be associated with the work of the about the cosmic insignificance of the body and the supreme Holy Spirit by some of the greatest philosopher-theologians significance of love. Propelled by these visions, a book I of the Middle Ages." Dr. Drummond, a missionary-theologian had been researching for several years on the planetary seriously committed to researching the psi-religion inter• heavens experienced between death and rebirth was soon face, adds that this tradition "constitutes a very proper published. context for the discussion of what are now called psychic phenomena, for it was clearly in the mainstream of faith- This brings us at once to a recognition of the often understanding in the Christian Church."10 overlooked importance of evaluating an essentially subjec• tive, psychic, prayer-meditation experience in terms of its objective benefits. In other words, is the experience-- Before directly addressing this all-important relation• like Saint Antony's clairvoyance which saved someone's life ship between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit on one hand and or my visions of Sant Kirpal Singh which changed mine for psi production or spiritual gifts on the other, we shall the better — clearly constructive, truly beneficial? first consider evidence for psi benefits invoked through group meditation and prayer. Dr. Karlis Osis, former research director for the American Society for Psychical Research, put the question similarly: Realizing Psi Benefits through Group Prayer and Meditation

5 4 0\ ft. I. I I. I I I I. I t t I I... I I t I t

The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research Can Prayer or Meditation Invoke Benefits of Psi?

One of the features common to the cases which have been cited concerning saintly psi is the involvement of more than extra sensory communication takes place between one person. In addition to having an essentially beneficial God and man. In religious jargon, this called prayer. Stated in terms of parapsychology, this or constructive nature, psi invoked through prayer or 14 meditation seems to be characteristically group-oriented. is telepathy. At the American Society for Psychical Research, Karlis Osis experimentally verified the close link between religious Presbyterian minister Richard Neff, in his Psychic Phenomena experience and ESP. He tested small groups of meditators and Religion, explores the subject of psi and prayer in who previously had spontaneous intense spiritual experi• depth. Neff sees the group process in prayer for healing as ences. Each individual's mood prior to meditation was the key to our understanding of ESP and prayer. carefully measured. While meditating together on a weekly basis, they were encouraged to alter their consciousness in In this conception of prayer as an extrasensory an effort to re-live their former "peak" religious experi• phenomenon, there is action beyond the limits of one person's mind; there is some interaction ence. Then the ESP between group members was tested and 15 quantitatively evaluated in light of their meditation between the minds of two or more persons. experiences, which were scored on psychological scales. The role of group dynamics in prayer was first reported Five major factors were found to characterize their in a series of prayer experiments designed to test, among meditations: non-defensive openness and oneness, alert other things, to what extent the group process --as opposed stillness, a buoyant mood, a feeling of meaningfulness, and to private, individual prayer — might intensify the healing intensification of love. Of these, the first experience, of people troubled with anxiety. Of three research sections which could be called in religious terms the "feeling of tested for comparison, the first went into group psycho• oneness," and the last one, "intensification of love" therapy, while another engaged in "random" non-group correlated directly with ESP scores. Group members were isolated prayer. Meanwhile a third group used a form of often in telepathic communication with each other and cooperative prayer therapy. This was a specifically group process in which people regularly prayed together for frequently shared the same visions and meditation experi• 16 ences . healing themselves and other members of the group.

Dr. Osis tentatively concludes: The result of this research was that the individual, private use of prayer was relatively ineffective. The other Experience of oneness with the other group members two control groups, having the group process as the essen• and with 'everything that exists' improves ESP tial, shared feature, showed considerable improvement in scores ... there is an increased flow of informa• relief of their anxiety. The prayer-therapy group showed a tion on a non-sensory level between the group seventy-two percent rate of implement based on personality members when the meditation has gone well.11 inventory questionnaires filled out before and after the experiments. He added that many instances of psi occurred with no connection with anything religious or spiritual; neither did Perhaps it is indeed the group process itself with its religious experience always produce ESP. Hence, while "some whole-system, cooperative dynamic which is responsible for overlap seems to be observable" between psi and religious intensifying inner and outer healing through prayer and experience, they should not be considered as identical. meditation. In our asking in prayer and our seeking in meditation our energies are intensified in cooperative group thought, intent and purpose and the benefits of psychic and As a prime example of how "parapsychology has invaded spiritual forces are invoked for each individual according the domain of religion," J.B. Rhine pointed out early in the to their unique needs. Without such a wholehearted group history of psi research how investigators both in and out of oneness of mind and purpose, regardless of individual the field of religion were inquiring into the role of the positions and relationships with each other, the desired extrasensory mind in prayer. In the 1940's Gerald Heard was results and benefits should not be expected. In light of one of the first to assign a major role to ESP activity in the group prayer and meditation experiments just reviewed, prayer.12 Around the same time Frank Laubach's brief study we can perhaps better understand why in the New Testament offered added support for a significant relationship between Jesus defines prayer as a mutually agreeable group phenom• ESP and prayer.^ The Chaplain of Duke university, where enon, a plural working together or synergy of spiritual Rhine's pioneering ESP experiments were conducted, expressed forces in the physical plane. As a means of making oneself in simple terms that

7 6 ON t. I 1. 1 I I. ft. 1 I L t ft i 1 i.. t |

Can Prayer or Meditation Invoke Benefits of Psi? The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research unity which Osis found to characterize his ESP meditation more attuned to these energies which may manifest in this experiments, synergy was again emphasized by Saint Paul when world, prayer as defined here is an essentially cooperative he assured the Corinthian Christians. They had been experience of two or more individuals. quarreling about the propriety of the Greek Apollos teaching alongside Paul. If two of you shall agree on earth touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for Neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he them by my Father which is in heaven. Where two that watereth; for God giveth the increase. Now or three are gathered together in my name, there he that planteth and he that watereth are one ... will I be in the midst of them (Matthew 18:18-20). For we are laborers together [synergists] with God. (I Corinthians 3:9). Psi and Synergy Moses had long before taught this multiplication factor of synergy to the outnumbered Israelites. Unless God abandoned Synergy is a group or aggregate phenomenon in which them altogether in their battles, he asks, "How should one parts of a system, or a whole, work together so that the total effect surpasses the sum of the effects of each chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight?" separate part. Biologically, the principle of synergy is (Deuteronomy 32:30) Spiritual synergy does not cause a mere illustrated in the systematic yet involuntary co-working of doubling or tripling of power; the multiplication explodes. the muscles in the body: the total strength of the whole muscular system far exceeds the strengths of the individual The synergy phenomenon is a distinct feature of whole muscles considered separately. In metallurgy, synergy is systems which are studied in physics under the heading of demonstrated in the cooperative action of several different field theory. Psychologist and psi researcher Gardner metals when mixed into a single alloy. Their stress load— Murphy has seen the whole system/field theory concept as vital to an explanation of phenomena like telepathy, total tensile strength when combined in the alloy precognition and prayer healing. Kenneth Walker, a well- greatly surpasses the sum of their individual tensile known writer on ESP agrees with Murphy. Discussing precog• strengths when not part of the alloy. nition in terms of holistic patters of events and unified fields he calls upon the synergy model to explain psi The words "synergy" and "synergetic" are direct deriva• phenomena in his conclusion that "structural wholes of this tive of synerqea, the Greek word for co-working. Saint Paul kind may be more than the sum of their parts."1' often uses this term in his letters. His emphasis on the priority of the synergy principle becomes even more obvious when the original Greek root is used. For instance. Saint Paraphysics is the branch of parapsychology which Paul assured the Roman Christians: "And we know all things studies a physical phenomena such as levitation and psycho• synergize for good to them that love God" (Romans 8:28). In kinesis (bending or movement of objects through mind power describing the Corinthians as Christ's ambassadors to whom alone). Writing on the theoretical foundations of para• God has committed the message of reconciliation. Saint Paul physics in 's Psychic Explorations, Brendan spoke of their "synergizing with Him" (II Corinthians 5:20, 0'Regan also considers synergy essential to psi, which he 1 6:1). says might be regarded as "high synergy." * O'Regan was once research consultant to astronaut-turned-consciousness researcher Mitchell as well as to architect-philosopher R. This synergetic excess or increase is apparently what Buckminster Fuller, who often stated that he understood God Saint Paul was referring to when encouraging the group of in terms of synergy. J.B. Rhine, coiner of the term "para• Greek Christians in Ephesus: psychology", which, he firmly believed, touched "great issues or religion", also envisioned the deity in terms of Even Christ; from whom the whole body fitly joined synergy. Reminiscent of Carl Jung's theory of the "collec• together [synergized] and compacted [intensified] tive unconscious" is his idea that if our minds are indeed by that which every joint supplieth, according to non-physical, then we can hypothesize a whole non-physical the effectual working in the measure of every system which includes all our minds. A divinity student part, maketh increase of the body unto the before becoming a psychologist, Dr. Rhine speculated that edifying of itself in love (Ephesians 4:16). his special mind-world would be "a kind of psychical over- soul, or reservoir, or continuum" with its own system of The transcendent "increase" of the group due to the action laws, properties and potentials. "One can conceive of this of synergy among the individual parts or joints is clearly great total pattern as having a transcendent uniqueness over stated here. Reminiscent of the intensification-love and 9 8 i t i 1 I I I t I i i i i ti t I

The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research Can Prayer or Meditation Invoke Benefits of Psi?

and above the nature of its parts that some might call its Catholic Saints, Jewish and Protestant mystics in medieval divinity."19 Germany to contemporary Indian spiritual teachers-- demonstrate that a wide variety of psi benefits can be Following Rhine's hypothesis, the Holy Spirit might be invoked through prayer and meditation. We have reviewed better understood functionally as a corporate psi field meditation and prayer experiments which indicate that the phenomenon; in effect, a group synergy field of soul-minds benefits of psi, whether simply experienced as increased ESP emersed in and attuned to the same frequency (the Christ or or as healing, are greater when group dynamics are involved. God). Given these clues, perhaps the Holy Spirit-- The principle of synergy helps to explain both the positive considered in this functional, synergetic fashion -- is and negative roles which group dynamics can play in the indeed the source of psi benefits and spiritual gifts tapped invocation of psi, which has been defined as "high synergy". in group prayer and meditation. Examples from Jesus' healing ministry have shown how low synergy may result in the lack of psi. The principle of synergy helps to explain how such psi benefits are successfully invoked in some instances and fail If a kind of group field forms the mental to be invoked in others. Let us look at a few of Jesus' environment for attempts to invoke psi through prayer and healings as recorded in Saint Mark's Gospel for clarifica• meditation, then psi would be manifested when this energy tion. First we find the Christ in his hometown of Nazareth, field — perhaps principally supplied by those present-- faced with an openly hostile crowd: "And they were offended was positive and cooperative. Conversely, the psi attempt at him," ostensibly because he was a local carpenter's son would tend to fail when conditions of this hypothetical field became antagonistic and uncooperative or were al• claiming great wisdom and miracle working abilities. At together absent. The multiplication factor, or synergy, of this point, Jesus says to his highly skeptical audience that this group force field illumines not only our search for psi a prophet has honor except "among his own kin, and in his invocation through prayer and meditation. The action of own house." Because of their antagonistic attitude, Jesus synergy is also a good model for better understanding what "could there do no mighty work ... and he marveled because we mean by God and the Holy Spirit. The synergy principle of their unbelief." Even so, he was not angry with them and is therefore an excellent bridge between religion and "laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them" (Mark psychical research and could be a valuable conceptual aid in 6:1-6). future studies involving the psi-religion interface. Jesus was apparently well aware of the need for synergy and of the inhibiting role of what can be called "contra- suggestion" in the invocation of psi benefits. In another NOTES healing, Jesus takes a deaf stammerer aside from the skeptical multitude and ordered the few allowed to witness 1E. Kadloubovsky and G.E.H. Palmer, Writing from the "Philokalia" on the healing that "they should tell no man" (Mark 7:36). Prayer of the Heart, translated from the Russian text, Dobrotolubiye Note that Jesus took the patient out of the range of the (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1962). contra-suggestion of skeptics. In another case, to avoid having the psychic healing benefits aborted by contra- 2William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: New suggestion, a man once blind is charged, "nor tell it to any American Library, Mentor Books, 1959). in the town" (Mark 8:26). 3R. M. Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness (New York: New York University It is a popular paradox of parapsychology that the Books, 1961). skeptical or unbelieving attitude of those present during psi demonstrations often adversely affect the outcome of ^Raphael Brown, translator, The Little Flowers of Saint Francis (New what Saint Mark would call a "mighty work." Christian York:Doubleday, Image Books, 1958). prayer healers Ambrose and Olga Worrall have flatly conclu• ded, "Any attempt to show that spiritual healing can be 5Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in (New York: Schocken accomplished in the presence of a critical audience, or a Books, 1941, 1946). group of unbelievers, is almost certain to fail."19 6Suami Nikhilananda, The Gospel of Sri Ramarkrishna. translated from Negali with an Introduction by Nikhilananda (New York: Ramakrishna- Conclusion Vivekanada Center, 1952).

7 Examples from the history of religion — from Jesus, Munagal S. Venkataramiah (Swami Ramananda Saraswati), translator.

10 11 1 I I I t I i I

The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research

Talks With Sri Ratnana Haharshi (India: Sri Ramamasramam, 1963).

8Authur Osborne, Ramana Haharshi and the Path of Self KnowledRC (London: Rider, 1963).

'H. Richard Drummond, Unto the Churches: Jesus Christ, Christianity and the Edgar Cayce Readings (Viriginia Beach: A.R.E. Press, 1973). l°Karlis Osis, "Informal Methods of Research in Psychic Phenomena for Religious Believers", Pastoral Psychology, September, 1970.

"Gerald Heard, A Preface to Prayer (New York: Harper and Row, 1944). l2Frank Laubach, Prayer (New York: Revell, 1946).

^Howard C. Wilkinson., "Parapsychology and Religion", in J. B. Rhine and Robert Brier, editors, Parapsychology Today (New York: Citadel Press, 1966).

14Richard Neff, Psychic Phenomena and Religion: ESP, Prayer, Healing, Survival (Philadelphia: The Westminister Press, 1971).

15Willaim Parker, Prayer Can Change Your Life (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1957).

^Kenneth Walker, The Extra-Sensory Hind (New York: Emerson Books, 1961).

^Brendan O'Regan, "The Emergence of ParaphysicsL Theoretical Founda• tions", in Edgar Mitchell, Psychic Exporlations: A Challenge for Science, edited by John White (New York: G. P. Putnam's 1974).

18J. B. Rhine, The Reach of the Mind (New York: Sloane Associates, 1947).

^Ambrose and Olga Worrall, The Gift of Healing: A Personal Story of Spiritual Therapy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965).

For this essay, Ry Redd won the JRPR 1986 competition for the Robert M. Ashby Memorial Award.

Ry Redd is involved in work on the thought of Edgar Cayce and is affiliated with A.R.E. in Virginia Beach, VA. His address is 2204 Mediterrean Ave., Virginia Beach, VA. 23451

12

Top View